La Vie Parisienne

A saucy, light-hearted look at life in Paris before the Great War, when life was enjoyed to the full and the pursuit of the grisette was high on the list of male preoccupations.

La Vie Parisienne was the magical name of a journal, which proclaimed itself proudly as the masthead of a way of life where frivolity, wit and satire were as important and relevant as literary and political intellectualism. The well-loved weekly attempted a fresh mix of humorous cartoons, short stories, sharp tales of fashion-folk, up-to-the-minute gossip about prominent persons, columns of aphorisms on such subjects as marriage ("Marriage is the only painful operation for which no anaesthetic is allowed") or love ("Without jealousy the most violent passions would not last a week"), fashion-orientated banter set out as pages of dialogue, and acid comments about all. Somewhat surprisingly, the mixture took. Founded in 1863, Parisians bought it in sufficient numbers week after week to ensure its survival for over a century.

This was an age when women were frivolous and uninhibited, and when drawing reigned supreme. The result is an amusing, delightful book to be enjoyed and shared. It is a microcosm of a period when life was unashamedly fun.