Parisian Sketches (Dedalus European Classics)

First published in 1880, same year as Edgar Degas’ The Dancing Lesson and Edouard Manet’s solo show of brasserie paintings at La Vie Moderne gallery, these Parisian Sketches share the Impressionist fascination with the contemporary life of Paris, an exuberant Paris in the era of the Op?ra Garnier and the Folies-Bergeres. Like the striking images of the early Impressionists, whom Huysmans championed when it was unfashionable, Parisian Sketches is an assault on the visual senses. Composed of a series of intense, meticulously observed literary impressions û of caf? concerts and circus performers, of streetwalkers and hot-chestnut sellers, of run-down slums and forgotten quarters in the grimy, shiny ‘City of Light’ -- Parisian Sketches recreates the Paris with an intimacy and an immediacy that confirms Huysmans as one of the masters of 19th century French prose.