French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Compagnon, Les Chiffonniers de Paris
History, Politics and Society
Bibliographic reference: A. Compagnon, Les Chiffonniers de Paris, Gallimard, collection "Bibliothèque des histoires", 2017.
Bibliographic reference: A. Compagnon, Les Chiffonniers de Paris, Gallimard, collection "Bibliothèque des histoires", 2017.
Antoine COMPAGNON, Les Chiffonniers de Paris
Paris: Gallimard, coll. "Bibliothèque des Histoires", Illustrated series, 2017.
512 pages, ill.
EAN 9782072735141
The ragpickers of nineteenth-century Parise century: an original and unexpected subject. A subject of great richness, spanning history, economics, urban planning, literature, and art.
Fragments of old linen, rags were used in papermaking. However, demand surged after the industrial revolution, driven by the expansion of education and the proliferation of the press. The ragpicker was simultaneously the unsettling prowler of the capital's night and an indispensable agent of societal progress. His figure haunts the works of writers and painters alike, from Hugo to Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier, from Daumier to Gavarni.
In his Tableau de Paris, Louis-Sébastien Mercier noted their rising prominence as early as 1781: "Do you see that man who, with the help of his hook, gathers what he finds in the mud and throws it into his basket?... This vile rag is the raw material that will become the ornament of our libraries, the precious treasure of the human mind. The ragpicker precedes Montesquieu, Buffon, and Rousseau."
One can readily grasp the scope of the subject. Antoine Compagnon explores it with exhaustive erudition: from the hygiene of Parisian streets to waste management; from prostitution, whose world intersected with that of the ragpickers, to their recruitment and the myths surrounding them.
The author invites us on a consistently surprising dive into nocturnal Paris, the Paris of the underworld and the collective imagination. Who would believe that the very first illustration cited in Pierre Larousse's Grand dictionnaire universel under the entry "Caricature" depicts a ragpicker?
The twilight of Parisian ragpicking dates back to the end of the Second Empire: paper was now manufactured from wood fiber, and in 1883, Prefect Eugène Poubelle decreed that household waste should be placed in containers, which would soon bear his name.
Yet the sinister rag-merchant in Marcel Carné's film Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du paradis) suffices to illustrate the enduring survival of the ragpicker in the imagery of Paris.
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An article on this work can be read on en-attendant-nadeau.fr:
Published in Gallimard's esteemed Bibliothèque des histoires series, Antoine Compagnon's study examines a surprisingly rich urban figure at the intersection of economics, hygiene, and literature. The ragpicker emerges here not merely as a marginalized nocturnal prowler, but as a central actor in the modernization of the French capital and the expansion of the nineteenth-century press. By analyzing the transition from rag-based papermaking to industrial wood fiber and the sanitation decrees of Prefect Eugène Poubelle, the book illuminates how municipal administration reshaped both the physical streets of Paris and the social geography of the urban underworld.
This erudite volume will appeal to historians, literary scholars, and readers interested in nineteenth-century French culture, urban studies, and the social imagination. It offers valuable insights into how canonical writers and artists—including Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, and Honoré Daumier—engaged with the margins of society. By connecting the practical realities of waste management and urban poverty to the broader currents of art and literature, Compagnon provides a comprehensive resource for understanding the multifaceted mythology of nineteenth-century Paris.