Dawn of the Belle Epoque

Mary McAuliffe received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland and has taught at several universities and lectured at the Smithsonian Institution. For many years she was a regular contributor to Paris Notes. She has traveled extensively in France and is the author of Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends. She lives in New York City with her husband.

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 extraordinary city even survive?"With the addition of an evocative new preface, Mary McAuliffe takes the reader back to these perilous years following the abrupt collapse of the Second Empire and France's uncertain venture into the Third Republic. By 1900, Paris had recovered and the Belle Epoque was in full flower, but the decades between were difficult, marked by struggles between republicans and monarchists, the Republic and the Church, and an ongoing economic malaise, darkened by a rising tide of virulent anti-Semitism.Yet these same years also witnessed an extraordinary blossoming in art, literature, poetry, and music, with the Parisian cultural scene dramatically upended by revolutionaries such as Monet, Zola, Rodin, and Debussy, even while Gustave Eiffel was challenging architectural tradition with his iconic tower.Through the eyes of these pioneers and others, including Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Clemenceau, Marie Curie, and César Ritz, we witness their struggles with the forces of tradition during the final years of a century hurtling towards its close. Through rich illustrations and vivid narrative, McAuliffe brings this vibrant and seminal era to life.

Introduction: The Terrible Year (1870-1871)Chapter 1: Ashes (1871)Chapter 2: Recovery (1871)Chapter 3: Scaling the Heights (1871-1872)Chapter 4: The Moral Order (1873-1874)Chapter 5: "This will kill that." (1875)Chapter 6: Pressure Builds (1876-1877)Chapter 7: A Splendid Diversion (1878)Chapter 8: Victory (1879-1880)Chapter 9: Saints and Sinners (1880)Chapter 10: Shadows (1881-1882)Chapter 11: A Golden Tortoise (1882)Chapter 12: Digging Deep (1883)Chapter 13: Hard Times (1884)Chapter 14: That Genius, That Monster (1885)Chapter 15: Onward and Upward (1886)Chapter 16: Fat and Thin (1887-1888)Chapter 17: Centennial (1889)Chapter 18: Sacred and Profane (1890-1891)Chapter 19: Family Affairs (1892)Chapter 20: "The bell has tolled. . . ." (1893)Chapter 21: Between Storms (1894)Chapter 22: Dreyfus (1895)Chapter 23: Passages (1896)Chapter 24: A Shot in the Dark (1897)Chapter 25: "J'accuse!" (1898)Chapter 26: "Despite all these anxieties . . ." (1898)Chapter 27: Rennes (1898-1899)Chapter 28: A New Century (1900)Bibliography