This article focuses on the writing and publication in the 1780s of books in French about the American Revolution. The corpus, which has, until now, been neglected by historians, includes texts that were revised by American diplomats appointed in Europe. These collaborations, not yet studied in any depth, may lead us to reappraise this Franco-American moment. The same is true of the Archives of the Royal Office of Books which contain censors’ reports concerning these writings, the great majority of which were tacitly authorized to circulate in France. They reveal that the criticisms levelled at French institutions were secondary in Vergennes’ eyes, provided they were not turned into a theoretical system. The sources suggest that such texts should not be seen merely in terms of “propaganda” as Durand Echeverria did, but that they should instead become part of an Atlantic or transatlantic intellectual history of the Age of Revolutions.