Barnes wrote the introduction to a collection of essays called Paris and Elsewhere: Selected Writings, by fellow Englishman Richard Cobb. The first essay in the book, “Experiences of an Anglo-French Historian,” speaks of the kind of research one would do to write a story like “Melon.” This collection was first published by the New York Review of Books in 1998.

Most critics agree that Barnes's greatest novel is Flaubert's Parrot (1984), which chronicles the travels of a British doctor who follows the life of Gustav Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, in order to determine if a stuffed parrot he has obtained was actually once owned by the famous French novelist.

Christopher Hibbert's historical narrative The Days of the French Revolution covers the time from the meeting of the Estates-General in 1789 to Napoleon's triumphant conquest of the country ten years later. It was...