Why read Pages From The Goncourt Journals?

Book cover of Pages From The Goncourt Journals

Book description

No evocation of Parisian life in the second half of the nineteenth century can match that found in the journals of the brothers Goncourt

The journal of the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt is one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century French literature, a work that in its richness of…

Explore

Topics

Paris

Genres

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Pages From The Goncourt Journals as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Richard Goodman

Author

I love gossip. But like many of us, I’m reluctant to admit it. Unless it’s high-brow literary gossip, as it is in the journals of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt.

They were French brothers who lived in mid-nineteenth-century Paris. They knew everyone who was anyone, especially writers, and wrote down everything they saw and heard. I love paging through this literary eavesdropping.

Gustave Flaubert, the author of Madame Bovary, was a frequent dinner companion. So was the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev and French writer Émile Zola. In these pages, I find these great writers unplugged, complaining, bragging, lusting, being…

From Richard's 3 favorite reads in 2023.