The Personality of Paris: Landscape and Society in the Long-Nineteenth Century

What was the personality of 19th-century Paris? To answer that question, this book eschews the conventional narrative and chronological route taken by most histories of Paris. Instead, it thematically analyses the complex personality traits of Paris from the onset of the Revolution of 1789 to the beginning of the Great War.

Starting with the topographical and cultural legacies that late 18th-century Paris inherited from its foundation in pre-Roman and Roman times and from its medieval infan...