A Place of Greater Safety
book by Hilary Mantel
A Place of Greater Safety is a 1992 novel by Hilary Mantel. It concerns the events of the French Revolution, focusing on the lives of Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Maximilien Robespierre from their childhood through the execution of the Dantonists. The narrative features not only the perspectives of leading personalities of the French Revolution but also those of their wives, lovers, parents, and friends, supplemented by descriptions of ceremonies, conspiracies, street fights, trials, and debates in the National Convention and the Jacobin Club.
Plot
High tax burdens, poor harvests, and the newly won independence of the United States fueled calls in France for the abolition of the feudal system. In the spring of 1789, the Estates-General met for the first time within the framework of the National Assembly in Versailles to discuss the redistribution of power between the nobility, clergy, and the third estate. Maximilien Robespierre, a delegate of the third estate for the city of Arras, found allies in fellow lawyers Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins. In the fight for their common cause, the three took on leading roles in the course of the French Revolution.
Desmoulins, in a passionate speech in a café, called on the already agitated and violence-ready crowd to arm themselves – two days later, the people stormed the Bastille. The tactically brilliant and morally flexible pragmatist Danton soon proved to be an important pillar for the First French Republic, which now had to defend itself against attacks from the remaining European monarchies. In the summer of 1792, Danton achieved a decisive victory in the First Coalition War against Austria and Prussia over the allied army, in part by bribing the Duke of Brunswick with the crown jewels.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “A Place of Greater Safety” is book by Hilary Mantel. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Place, Greater and Safety, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “book by Hilary Mantel” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4658878. VIAF identifies the subject as 6465151052041933530009. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 1789 and 1792.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Place of Greater Safety” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.