Maximilien Robespierre is one of the greatest figures of European history but is at the same time one of the most reviled and revered. The essays in this volume seek to explain these contradictory views of Robespierre. They provide a balanced and up-to-date account of Robespierre's life and work by looking in turn at his ideology and vision of the Revolution, his role in the political life of Revolutionary France, and finally at representations of Robespierre in the history, drama and fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.