Dawn of the Belle Epoque

The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

By: Mary McAuliffe

Narrated by: Nancy Peterson

Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

A humiliating military defeat by Bismarck's Germany, a brutal siege, and a bloody uprising - Paris in 1871 was in shambles, and the question loomed, "Could this extraordinary city even survive?"

Mary McAuliffe takes the listener back to these perilous years following the abrupt collapse of the Second Empire and France's uncertain venture into the Third Republic. By 1900, Paris had recovered, and the Belle Epoque was in full flower, but the decades between were difficult, marked by struggles between republicans and monarchists, the Republic and the Church, and an ongoing economic malaise, darkened by a rising tide of virulent anti-Semitism.

Yet these same years also witnessed an extraordinary blossoming in art, literature, poetry, and music, with the Parisian cultural scene dramatically upended by revolutionaries such as Monet, Zola, Rodin, and Debussy, even while Gustave Eiffel was challenging architectural tradition with his iconic tower.

Through the eyes of these pioneers and others, including Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Clemenceau, Marie Curie, and Cesar Ritz, we witness their struggles with the forces of tradition during the final years of a century hurtling towards its close.

©2011 Mary S. McAuliffe; Preface copyright 2014 by Mary S. McAuliffe (P)2021 Tantor

Solid Entry in this series on late 19th Century French history

Great resource, but narration was a bit quiet, and some material at the beginning seems copied from the last book, and I would have liked to hear more about the Paris Commune, as well as the French Empire.
Nonetheless, this is wonderful interweaving of the history of Paris’ art, politics, science, legal and military. We see how France helps shapes the modern world with the Electric Palace, with its electric cars and cinema, and the pioneering yet I’ll-fated Panama venture. Tender amores are mixed with social struggles, and international challenges. The Dreyfus Affair is here treated with much detail of the personalities involved, impassioned speeches and their juicy intrigues. It unfortunately serves as a foreshadowing of the antisemitic crimes of the 20th century, as well as the social upheavals and polarized politics of our own time.

Essential background to French Art and Culture

Connecting people in time and with events provide a rich journey from 1860s to Pre WW1. Very interesting to learn more of the artists path. Well done.

Numerous Anecdotes

We’ll researched anecdotes of the time period. Nuanced narration. Connected the main characters to each other & the era.

A massacre

I’ve had it. What will it take for whoever is in charge of recording audiobooks to stop inflicting such incompetence on the listeners? Do they truly not care, even a little bit? I don’t expect perfection, I really don’t, but the narrator of this book is perhaps the worst I’ve ever had to endure, and it’s a shame because her tone and inflection are pleasant, but she literally destroys any word that is not in English. This is a book about France, set in France, with French names and French words. If at least she was consistent, but no, she isn’t, not one bit. She’ll pronounce a name one way, and later, in a completely different way. And either way is wrong. And what about the author? Surely she can’t have been very pleased to see her work mangled like this. It can’t be that hard, or even that expensive, to coach a narrator or hire a consultant to help out with pronunciation? The book itself is wonderful, well researched, entertaining and informative, but it is a real pity that it has been massacred to the point of ruining it. It is disrespectful to the author and to the listeners, and there’s really no excuse for selling something so defective. This problem of inadequate pronunciation of foreign language words is probably one of the most common criticisms coming from audiobook listeners, and it seems that no matter how much we complain, this practice keeps happening.

Bad pronunciation

Very informative and engaging book, but the narrator (very confidently) mispronounced many of the French words. I could handle the mispronounciations until we got to Proust, which is NOT pronounced "Proo," no matter how much you French-ify the R.