'Even the pigeons are dancing, kissing, going in circles, mounting each other. Paris is the city of love, even for the birds' Samantha Schutz
Paris: the city of exiles, artists, writers, princes and thieves. The myth of the romantic city survives, as the early-twentieth century idea was that the French capital was a place for indulgence 'la capitale de l'amour'. By the beginning of the twentieth century the many artists, writers and thinkers visiting Paris had a different idea of fun; they went there to enjoy the beauty of the city which had become Europe's cultural centre, as well as to experience the general sense of excitement and freedom it offered.
Twentieth Century Paris: A Literary Guide for Travellers takes the literary-minded traveller (either in person or in an armchair) on a vivid and illuminating journey, retracing the footsteps of writers who have lived and worked in, or been inspired by, the history and cityscape of Paris from James Joyce, George Orwell, Ezra Pound, Katherine Mansfield and Jean Rhys to Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway and many others. It also includes writers and thinkers such as Amedeo Modigliani and Leon Trotsky.
Looking at 1900–1950, Marie-José Gransard illuminates one of the most influential centuries in the city's flamboyant literary and cultural history.
