Pulled from the shelf of a rare-book store by collector Neale M. Albert, Paris: Les Boulevards is a true gem that was forgotten for well over a century but will now enchant readers once again in this charming facsimile edition. Paris’s romantic architecture and vibrant street culture make it one of the most enjoyable cities in the world to stroll and people watch in. This charming little illustrated volume by Charles Franck captures just that through delicately rendered Victorian-era illustrations of panoramic cityscapes of the most gorgeous Parisian boulevards. Complete with horse buggies in the streets, women in society hats, and men in coattails, Paris: Les Boulevards highlights a nostalgic era in both fashion and architecture. To further add to the charm, this volume honors its original unique binding with eleven gatefolds: each page folds out to six panels displaying the whole of the famous promenades at once. With pages including boulevard des Italiens, avenue de l’Opéra, and boulevard Montmartre, Parisians and tourists alike will savor Franck’s beautiful and meticulous re-creations of the city’s most important streets and their buildings. Added to the original book are thoughtful texts on each panel and an introduction by author and curator, Pamela Golbin. Each panoramic image is brought into historical context by Golbin with short anecdotes and musings on famous addresses and landmarks that may or may not still exist. The original book can only be found in one other library in the world, so little is known about the original publication date or the author, adding further captivation to this volume. Paris remains one of the most romantic and dreamy cities in the world, and for this Paris: Les Boulevards will be perfect for those of all ages smitten with the city’s charms.

The author draws upon the methodologies of theater and cultural studies to examine the construction of "the Orient" on the Parisian stage during the nineteenth century, the period of France's first imperial expansions into North Africa and the Middle East. As an increasingly large segment of the French population moved into contact with the Middle East and North Africa as soldiers, colonial administrators, settlers, and merchants, the balance between fantasy and immediacy in Orientalized drama shifted. The domestic melodrama gave way to elaborately staged military spectacles based on current events. Performed before working-class audiences, many of whose members were to be called up for military service, these spectacles bore explicit political and imperial agendas. Mining rich archival resources of play-texts, censorship reports, critical reviews, and contemporary writings on performance practice, this book reveals the complex processes by which the institutions of popular culture helped shape nineteenth-century notions of race, ethnicity, and nationality.

While much attention has been paid to the making of Paris in the work of writers and artists, little is known about the city as defined and created by the fashion media. Filling this gap in studies of the French capital, this original and illuminating book focuses on how the French fashion press - with its rich conjunction of words and images - has been able to construct Paris as a leading world fashion city.Based in an original analysis of fashion writing and images in contemporary French fashion magazines and newspapers, the book shows how the fashion media have been central to the consecration of the city of Paris on the fashion map, as well as its celebration in the collective imaginary. Agnes Rocamora explores, for example, the figures of 'la Parisienne' and 'la passante' (the female passer by), and the presence of the Eiffel tower in fashion visuals. She gives attention to the continuum between the French journalistic discourse and that of cultural forms such as films, paintings and literature, thus revealing the persistence across texts and time of visions of Paris and shedding light on the production and reproduction of the Paris myth.