Nicolas in Paris: From Printer's Assistant to Writer

 

Once trained as printer’s helper, Nicolas moved on to settle in Paris, City of Light [and Darkness], home to the French Enlightenment.  There, his exposure to the world of books and ideas via the print shop floor and his avid reading aroused the ambition to become a novelist and man of letters.

Paris, plan of Turgot 1736

Paris in the 1780s

    Nicolas Restif and the Republic of Letters in Paris

In the philosophe Jean Jacques Rousseau he found a fellow traveler and a guiding light. Here was a man of modest origins like himself whose provocative works resonated with insight, truth, and passion for reform.

Just as the Discourse on Inequality (1755) revealed that the foundation of social injustice and moral decay lay in the institution of private property, the enormously popular novel, the New Heloïse (1761), celebrated ideas and sentiments that were dear to Restif’s heart: the social and moral benefits of reaffirmed paternal authority; the critical role of the devoted mother in the family; the "natural" goodness, simplicity, and harmony that reigned in the virtuous rural community, in sharp contrast to the vice, luxury, and discord that ruled in cities.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Looking back to the origins of society, Rousseau had described the fall of man from the lost innocence of his natural state. Now Restif, feeling the sting of his own debasement, looked back nostalgically to the Sacy of his childhood to find his paradise lost. In his struggle to make amends, he was prompted to dress his father in the clothes of a saint and hero.