The Humane Comedy
Constant, Tocqueville, and French Liberalism

"The late George Armstrong Kelly's Humane Comedy, pieced together from a nearly complete manuscript after his death, is not just a supremely elegant and immensely learned book but also, in its reserved, ironic way, stunningly profound." French Politics and Society

"Professor Kelley's book focuses...on liberalism. He examines with accomplished scholarship, sensitivity and elegance of style, and without modish jargon, the fissures and contradictions within it. The subject-matter is familiar but Kelley leaves us with a deeper understanding of the weaknesses of French liberalism as a political force, doomed to nearly a century of eclipse." The Times Literary Supplement

"...one of the great themes of this work is the startling connection between liberal views and religious belief....In this dazzling conclusion, Kelly has given us every reason to regret his passing and to measure the loss to scholarship." Stanley Mellon, American Historical Review

"Kelly's achievement greatly enhances our understanding of France's liberal intellectuals in the first half of the nineteenth century, who attempted to accomplish what their Enlightenment predecessors had sought to comprehend in their own search for the conditions making possible a free society. His success invites historians to appreciate the permanence and impermanence of all theory marshalled to create free peoples and nations." Canadian Journal of History