The years before the First World War have long been romanticized as a zenith of French culture—the “Belle Époque.” The era is seen as the height of a los

When Maude Pichon runs away from provincial Brittany to Paris, her romantic dreams vanish as quickly as her savings. Desperate for work, she answers an unusual

“In this entertaining academic history of these rival magazines, Mesch . . . explores the emergence of the working woman in France.” —Publishers Weekly At

A humiliating military defeat by Bismarck's Germany, a brutal siege, and a bloody uprising—Paris in 1871 was a shambles, and the question loomed, "Could this