"Thuanus" : The Making of Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1617)

The Parisian magistrate Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1617) was a major figure
in the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) and their immediate aftermath. Best
known for his magisterial History of his own times (covering 1546-1607) and
his complementary Memoirs (covering 1553-1601), de Thou was a key political
negotiator, a famous book-collector and an influential patron to scholars and
writers, as well as a respected poet in his own right and a prolific
correspondent. This is the first monograph on de Thou since Samuel Kinser's
bibliographical study of 1966. In the course of five chapters, thematically
arranged between a substantial introduction and a dramatic conclusion, Ingrid
De Smet meticulously unpicks de Thou's strategies of self-fashioning and
career enhancement as well as the conditions that led to his fall from grace.
In doing so, this monograph not only rehabilitates de Thou as a creative (neo-
Latin) writer of international allure, it also uncovers and contextualizes the
complexities of de Thou's life, writings, and thought.