Jones, Colin 1947-

PERSONAL:

Born 1947. Education: B.A.; Oxford University, D.Phil.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Center for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick, Humanities Building, Rm. 449a, Gibbet Hill Rd., Coventry CV4 7AL, England. E-mail—colin.jones@warwick.ac.uk.

CAREER:

University of Exeter, Exeter, England, past faculty member; University of Warwick, Coventry, England, professor of history, 1996—. Princeton University, visiting fellow at Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical studies, 1986; Stanford University, Kratter Visiting Professor, 1993-94, 2000; Columbia University, fellow at Institute of Scholars, Paris, France, 2001-02; College de France, visiting professor, Paris, France, 2003. Wellcome Trust, vice chair of History of Medicine Panel, 1999—; member of the History Research Panel of the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

MEMBER:

Royal Historical Society (fellow; vice president, 2000-03).

WRITINGS:

Charity and Bienfaisance: The Treatment of the Poor in the Montpellier Region, 1740-1815, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1982.

The Longman Companion to the French Revolution, Longman (London, England), 1988.

The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France, Routledge (New York, NY), 1989.

(With John Ardagh) Cultural Atlas of France, Facts on File (New York, NY), 1991.

The Cambridge Illustrated History of France, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Laurence Brockliss) The Medical World of Early Modern France, Clarendon Press (Oxford, England), 1997, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon, 1715-99, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2002.

Paris: Biography of a City, Allen Lane (London, England), 2004, Viking (New York, NY), 2005.

EDITOR

Contre Retz: sept pamphlets du temps de la Fronde, University of Exeter (Exeter, England), 1982.

Britain and Revolutionary France: Conflict, Subversion, and Propaganda, University of Exeter (Exeter, England), 1983.

(With Malyn Newitt and Stephen Roberts) Politics and People in Revolutionary England: Essays in Honour of Ivan Roots, Blackwell (New York, NY), 1986.

Voices of the French Revolution, Salem House Publishers (Topsfield, MA), 1988.

(With Jonathan Barry, and coauthor of introduction) Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State, Routledge (New York, NY), 1991.

(With Roy Porter, and coauthor of introduction) Reassessing Foucault: Power, Medicine, and the Body, Routledge (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Dror Wahrman) The Age of Cultural Revolutions: Britain and France, 1750-1820, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2002.

Contributor to academic journals, including American Historical Review, European Studies Review, History, Representations, and Social History of Medicine. Member of editorial committee, French Historical Studies, French History, Medical History, and Past and Present.

SIDELIGHTS:

Historian Colin Jones has produced numerous books about France, ranging from the story of Paris to the history of medicine in that country. In his The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France, the author presents a series of essays focusing on poverty, public assistance, and health care in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. "The essays unquestionably succeed on their own terms, as object lessons on the importance of joining the history of assistance and the history of medicine," according to Matthew Ramsey in the Journal of Social History.

Along with Jonathan Barry, Jones edited Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State. This book includes a number of essays developed from a three-day conference sponsored by the Society for the Social History of Medicine in 1988. The essays cover a wide range of topics concerning medicine and charity, such as the relationship among medicine, charity, and social power and interaction between urban growth and medical charity. Dorothy Porter, writing in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, commented that the editors "stress that it is only possible to understand charity policies in relation to the politics of public welfare." In his review in Lancet, Jonathan Sinclair Carey felt that the essays "provide a fascinating examination of a complex and important topic with far-ranging implications—political, theological, medical, and psychological—for our own understanding of caring and curing today."

Jones collaborated with Laurence Brockliss to write The Medical World of Early Modern France. The authors focus on the development of France's medical system from the sixteenth to the late-eighteenth century. In addition to writing about French medical experts, the authors also include many others who influenced French thinking about the practice of medicine, including quacks and women in religion and charitable organizations. History: Review of New Books contributor Lois N. Magner commented that "the formidable volume provides a remarkably complex and comprehensive account of French medical history and its place within a broader range of developments in French society." Terence Murphy wrote in the Journal of Modern History: "A monumental contribution to French historiography, the text will become the definitive reference for future investigations of the medical world of the early modern period."

Jones provides a political history of France during the eighteenth century in The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon, 1715-99. Instead of focusing on the French Revolution and its aftermath as many historians do when writing about this time period, the author instead discusses the country's other accomplishments in areas such as trade, industry, and economics. Marie Marmo Mulaney wrote in the Library Journal that the author thus "allows us to see the period as contemporaries did." A Publishers Weekly contributor praised The Great Nation as "an exhaustive account," adding: "This is an outstanding book for academics and students looking for a one-volume overview of the century."

In Paris: Biography of a City, Jones presents a chronological narrative of the old European city from its beginnings as the Roman city of Lutetia to its development into a modern urban center in the twelfth century and onward. The author includes numerous in-depth sidebars covering topics such as the founder of the Sorbonne University, Robert de Sorbon, and the various neighborhoods of Paris. A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that the author "provides all sorts of interesting tidbits" and went on to call the book "entertaining and informative." Several reviewers noted that the book would best be enjoyed by those with a keen interest in France. For example, Brad Hooper remarked Booklist that the history "will find its audience among history aficionados and ardent travelers." An Economist critic reflected that Jones provides a "biography" of the city "not only as political narrative, but through the city's evolution in terms of ideas, arts and geography too."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February, 1984, Dora B. Weiner, review of Charity and Bienfaisance: The Treatment of the Poor in the Montpellier Region, 1740-1815, pp. 132-133; October, 1991, Louis S. Greenbaum, review of The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France, pp. 1207-1208; December, 2003, D.M.G. Sutherland, review of The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon, 1715-99, p. 1531.

Biography, spring, 2003, Judith Thurman and Emily Eakin, review of Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress, p. 379.

Booklist, May 15, 1992, review of Cultural Atlas of France, p. 1714; April 15, 2005, Brad Hooper, review of Paris: Biography of a City, p. 1427.

British Book News, June, 1983, Joseph Rogistel, review of Charity and Bienfaisance, pp. 364-365.

British Journal of Sociology, September, 1995, Nicholas Gane, review of Reassessing Foucault: Power, Medicine, and the Body, pp. 546-547.

Canadian Journal of History, April, 1993, John F. Hutchinson, review of Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State, p. 154.

Choice, July, 1987, R.E. Schreiber, review of Politics and People in Revolutionary England: Essays in Honour of Ivan Roots, p. 1742; December, 1990, M. McClellan, review of The Charitable Imperative, p. 661; May, 2003, D. Poner, review of Madame de Pompadour, p. 1540.

Christian Science Monitor, January 19, 1989, Pamela Marsh, review of The Longman Companion to the French Revolution, p. 13.

Contemporary Review, December, 1989, Esmond Wright, review of The Longman Companion to the French Revolution, pp. 330-331.

Contemporary Sociology, January, 1993, Jean Elisabeth Pederson, review of Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State, pp. 122-123.

Economic History Review, February, 1995, Tim Hitchcock, review of Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State, pp. 201-202.

Economist, November 2, 2002, review of The Great Nation; April 23, 2005, review of Paris, p. 80.

English Historical Review, October, 1985, William Doyle, review of Charity and Bienfaisance, p. 901; July, 1989, John Morrill, review of Politics and People in Revolutionary England, p. 737.

French Studies, April, 1998, E.C. Spary, review of The Medical World of Early Modern France, pp. 191-192.

History: Journal of the Historical Association, January, 1997, Rosalind Mitchison, review of Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State, p. 109; July, 1999, John Henry, review of The Medical World of Early Modern France, p. 522.

History: Review of New Books, spring, 1998, Lois N. Magner, review of The Medical World of Early Modern France, p. 139.

Isis, September, 1998, Thomas Broman, review of The Medical World of Early Modern France, pp. 528-530.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, April, 1990, J.S.A. Adamson, review of Politics and People in Revolutionary England, pp. 312-315.

Journal of European Studies, September, 1992, John Flower, review of Cultural Atlas of France, p. 275.

Journal of Historical Geography, July, 1992, Anne Kelly Knowles, review of Cultural Atlas of France, pp. 347-348.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, summer, 1984, Isser Woloch, review of Charity and Bienfaisance, pp. 145-147; summer, 1991, Dora B. Weiner, review of The Charitable Imperative, pp. 126-128; spring, 1994, Dorothy Porter, review of Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State, p. 705.

Journal of Modern History, March, 2001, Terence Murphy, review of The Medical World of Early Modern France, p. 168.

Journal of Social History, summer, 1993, Matthew Ramsey, review of The Charitable Imperative, p. 870.

Journal of Urban History, May, 1998, Tim Hitchcock, review of Reassessing Foucault, p. 497.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2002, review of The Great Nation, p. 1750; February 1, 2005, review of Paris, p. 166.

Lancet, November 9, 1991, Jonathan Sinclair Carey, review of Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State, p. 1194.

Library Journal, March 1, 2003, Marie Marmo Mulaney, review of The Great Nation, p. 104.

London Review of Books, March 21, 1985, Norman Hampson, review of Britain and Revolutionary France: Conflict, Subversion, and Propaganda, pp. 20, 22.

Modern Language Review, April, 1996, Rachel Killick, review of The Cambridge Illustrated History of France, pp. 491-492.

New York Review of Books, June 12, 2003, Philip Nicholas Furbank, review of The Great Nation, p. 68.

New York Times Book Review, December 8, 2002, Emily Eakin, review of Madame de Pompadour, p. 56.

Publishers Weekly, September 30, 1988, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Voices of the French Revolution, pp. 53-54; December 16, 2002, review of The Great Nation, p. 53; March 7, 2005, review of Paris, p. 60.

School Librarian, May, 1995, The Cambridge Illustrated History of France, p. 81.

Seventeenth-Century News, fall, 1997, Janice L. Pallister, review of The Cambridge Illustrated History of France, pp. 64-65.

Sixteenth Century Journal, fall, 1999, Winfried Schleiner, review of The Medical World of Early Modern France, pp. 824-826.

Times Literary Supplement, January 23, 1987, David Underdown, review of Politics and People in Revolutionary England, p. 88; June 16, 1995, Norman Hampson, review of The Cambridge Illustrated History of France, p. 30.

ONLINE

University of Warwick, Centre for the History of Medicine Web site,http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/chm/ (April 18, 2007), faculty profile of Colin Jones.