William Doyle

William Doyle (born 1942) is a British historian, specialising in 18th-century France, who is most notable for his one-volume Oxford History of the French Revolution (1st edition, 1989; 2nd edition, 2002; 3rd edition, 2018). He is one of the leading revisionist historians of the French Revolution, obtaining his doctorate from the University of Oxford with a thesis entitled The parlementaires of Bordeaux at the end of the eighteenth century, 1775–1790. He is also professor emeritus of history at Bristol University, a fellow of the British Academy and a trustee of The Society for the Study of French History. Published works The Old European Order 1660–1800 (Oxford University Press, 1978) Origins of the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1980; 3rd edition, 1992) The Ancien Regime (Macmillan, 1986) The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1989; second edition, 2002; third edition, 2018) Venality: the Sale of Offices in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford University Press, 1996) Jansenism: Catholic Resistance to Authority from the Reformation to the French Revolution (Macmillan, 1999) The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2001) Aristocracy and Its Enemies in the Age of Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2009)