With the publication of this title, Dr Guest completes his massive survey of ballet in France from 1770 to 1870. This volume covers the period from 1793 to 1819, the time of such luminaries as Gardel, Milon, Vestris, Duport and Bigottini. The period has often been dismissed as an interlude of decadence before the flowering of the romantic ballet, but as Dr. Guest reveals in this account, it was in fact a period of great significance in the development of ballet as a major theatre art.