The World of the Paris Café

Download or read book The World of the Paris Café written by W. Scott Haine and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1998-09-04 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The World of the Paris Café, W. Scott Haine investigates what the working-class café reveals about the formation of urban life in nineteenth-century France. Café society was not the product of a small elite of intellectuals and artists, he argues, but was instead the creation of a diverse and changing working population. Making unprecedented use of primary sources—from marriage contracts to police and bankruptcy records—Haine investigates the café in relation to work, family life, leisure, gender roles, and political activity. This rich and provocative study offers a bold reinterpretation of the social history of the working men and women of Paris.