Vies oubliées. Au cœur du XVIIIe siècle brings together archive scraps. In this book, Arlette Farge invents a way of writing with what remains of historiographical work. What remains are the relics, the often incomplete documents deemed impossible to classify and index by archivists, so uncertain are their dates and origins. What remains are also the historian's scraps, the fragments she has given up on integrating into her writings, which have not found their way into her previous books. This negative loot from over forty years of research clearly outlines her favorite subjects, while giving a new, delicate and powerful form to the historical thinking that underpins her work.