Fictions of the Press in Nineteenth-Century France

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction

   • Edmund Birch

   Pages 1-12

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3. Newspaper Fictions, Newspaper Histories

   • Edmund Birch

   Pages 13-57

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4. A Sentimental Education: Balzac’s Journalists

   • Edmund Birch

   Pages 59-114

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5. The Brothers Goncourt and the End of Privacy

   • Edmund Birch

   Pages 115-162

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6. Sleight of Hand: Maupassant and Actualité

   • Edmund Birch

   Pages 163-205

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7. Conclusion

   • Edmund Birch

   Pages 207-215

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8. Back Matter

   Pages 217-238

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This book explores how writers responded to the rise of the newspaper over the course of the nineteenth century. Taking as its subject the ceaseless intertwining of fiction and journalism at this time, it tracks the representation of newspapers and journalists in works by Honoré de Balzac, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, and Guy de Maupassant. This was an era in which novels were published in newspapers and novelists worked as journalists. In France, fiction was to prove an utterly crucial presence at the newspaper’s heart, with a gilded array of predominant literary figures active in journalism. Today, few in search of a novel would turn to the pages of a daily newspaper. But what are usually cast as discrete realms – fiction and journalism – came, in the nineteenth century, to occupy the same space, a point which complicates our sense of the cultural history of French literature.

• Media
• Journalism
• Newspaper
• Politics
• Novel

“Birch has written a rich, textured, and thoughtful analysis of the novel of journalism in nineteenth-century France. The significance of his book to our understanding of the period’s social and intellectual life is as far-reaching as literary realism itself, which the works under study here all represent.” (James Smith Allen, H-France Review, Vol. 20 (190), October, 2020)

“Many … writers from the period who used the press as a literary laboratory merit similar attention. Birch’s book provides an excellent model for future research on that theme.” (Max McGuinness, Modern Language Review, Vol. 115 (4), October, 2020)

“Edmund Birch’s monograph skilfully explores different aspects of the interrelationship between fiction and newspapers in nineteenth-century France through a study of selected seminal novels of journalism. … The text is extremely well written, with an enviable clarity of expression and lucidity of exposition, not least in its use of literary theory. Overall the book represents a significant scholarly contribution to our understanding of both nineteenth-century French literature and the cultural history of journalism in France.” (Raymond Kuhn, Modern & Contemporary France, December 10, 2019)

• Churchill College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

  Edmund Birch

Edmund Birch teaches French Literature at the University of Cambridge, UK, where he is Director of Studies and College Lecturer at Churchill College and Selwyn College. He is Co-Editor of ‘Literature and the Press in France’, a special number of the journal Dix-Neuf (2017), and the author of a number of articles on French literature and the cultural history of journalism.

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