Robert Darnton is the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and the director of the University Library at Harvard University. His honors include a MacArthur Prize, the National Humanities Medal, and election to the French Legion of Honor. He is the author of The Great Cat Massacre and The Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.
H�l�ne Delavault studied at the Paris Conservatoire and The Julliard School, has sung in operas and operettas, and has also created her own cabarets, including an exploration of the world of bawdy songs in eighteenth-century France.