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Robert Darnton (born May 10, 1939) is an American cultural historian, recognized as a leading expert on eighteenth century France.

He graduated from Harvard University in 1960, attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, and earned a Ph.D. (D. Phil.) in history from Oxford in 1964. He worked as reporter at The New York Times from 1964 to 1965. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1982, and was President of the American Historical Association in 1987. As of 2005 he is Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of European History at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1968.

Darnton is a pioneer in the growing field of the history of the book. One of his books is The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996). He currently is writing about electronic publishing. He is founder of the Gutenberg-e program, sponsored by Mellon Foundation.

In 1999 he was named a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur, the highest award given by the French government, in recognition of his work.

Works

• Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (1968)
• The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775-1800 (1979)
• The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (1982) ISBN 0674536576
• The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984)
• Revolution in Print: the Press in France 1775-1800 (1989) edited with Daniel Roche
• The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (1989)
• Edition et sédition. L'univers de la littérature clandestine au XVIIIe siècle (1991)
• Berlin Journal, 1989-1990 (1991)
• Gens de lettres, gens du livre (1992)
• The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France (1995)
• The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France, 1769-1789 (1995)
• George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century (June 2004)