Paris on the Eve, 1900-1914

"Paris on the Eve" is an interesting and insightful look at the French capital during the first decade-and-a-half of the last century. Biographer Vincent Cronin paints his story of the City of Light through portraits of artists, dancers, musicians, and the larger creative circles in which they moved. The "social forces" so beloved of academic historians are largely absent -- at least until the final chapters when nationalism raises its ugly head and we begin the inexorable trudge into the first world war. Consequently, Cronin's approach may not be to every reader's taste, and certainly is not a comprehensive picture of urban life in the period. On the other hand, however, I think Cronin did exactly what he set out to do -- which he explained in his introduction as, first, "to bring to life the creative achievements [of the period] not in isolated compartments but as a whole" and show how they influenced and built on each other, and second, "to present the era largely in terms of people." In this the author is particularly successful, and brings together an impressive amount of research, much of it, at the time the book was published, new in English. His perception, again summarized in the introduction, of "the unusually high importance attached by people [in Paris] in general to the arts" during this period I think justifies this approach. I'm a little surprised that this book hasn't been reviewed on this site before because I found it a valuable and worthwhile look at an interesting era. I read this primarily because I have planned for some time to read Cronin's "Paris, City of Light: 1919-1939," and then discovered he wrote this book on the earlier era as well. I'm looking forward now to see whether he takes the same approach in the second book, or if the postwar epoch brings with it a new interpretive lens.