The World of the Paris Caf: Sociability among the French Working Class 1789-1914 (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science 114)

About this book

In The World of the Paris Caf W. Scott Haine investigates what the working-class caf reveals about the formation of urban life in nineteenth-century France. Caf 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 sourcesfrom marriage contracts to police and bankruptcy recordsHaine investigates the caf 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.