Elisabeth Jay, British Writers and Paris, 1830–1875

Abstract

This book is a richly documented study of the various responses of British writers as visitors to or residents in the French capital during the mid-nineteenth century, a period marked by major political events and a rich cultural life. The ambivalence of their responses and their sometimes radically different judgments offer a rich scope to reflect on British prejudices towards France and the duality of their reactions, caught between admiration and envy on one side, and jealousy and fear on the other. In her Introduction, Jay differentiates her methodological approach from that of previous studies on Britishness which have considered the formation of British identity to be unsettled, even estranged, by the visitor's confrontation with other modes of living when travelling abroad. She, on the contrary, considers the cultural impact of Paris on the specific category of British writers whatever their specialty, from fiction to journalism, and makes ample use of a vast range of primary sources, from diaries and private letters to essays, biographies, poetry and novel writing. Experiencing Paris is shown to have deeply influenced British writers and is explored along three major lines: the materiality of Paris as a city and the importance of its social life (Part I), Anglophone journalism in Paris (Part II) and the fictional formatting of Paris (Part III). Part I, aptly entitled 'Finding One's Bearings in Mid-Nineteenth Century Paris', allows the reader a full view of the topography of Paris, and how its rapidly changing image struck the then visitors. The major political events and regime changes of the period, notably the 1848 revolution and the bloody upheavals in 1871 that were followed by rule under the Commune government, entailed major social and cultural changes. Those changes are not viewed by Jay from the perspective of the mythical concept of progress but from the dynamic approach of the interaction between British writers and the capital in their various accounts of their Paris experience. Against the background of the urban changes carried out under Emperor Napoleon III's ambitious reign, Jay looks with particular interest at the project of redesigning Paris according to Baron Haussmann's plan, whose intent was to eradicate the undesirable, filthy, narrow streets and replace them with boulevards and avenues that would offer glamorous views in the 1850s and 1860s. She analyses the responses of the British residents to this new image, shown to be less enthusiastic than those of the French middle-class, who were far from indifferent to the prestige gained by the new Haussmannian capital. The fear of the prestige of London being overshadowed by Paris was very present.