La fête impériale, par Frédéric Loliée (Paris: F. Joven, 1907)
Almost forty years after the fall of the Second Empire, people began to be nostalgic for that gay, insouciant Paris of Napoleon III, not however forgetting (or perhaps remembering especially) the darker side to her reputation. Whilst the extraordinary costume balls, the lights, the cafes, the theatres were admired and the dissolute showgirls were tut-tutted, the reading public nevertheless devoured such anecdotes of 'luxury and indulgence'.
Frédéric Loliée, literary critic and avid theatre-goer, became a specialist in the genre: indeed he loved to paint portraits of the personalities who enlived the 'Fête impériale', not only the members of Parisian high society but also the women classed as “Hors du Monde” (outside society) – the cortisans, the artists, the chanteuses… who whilst being 'shady ladies' were nevertheless irresistable. Loliée described these women and the balls and dinners during which they climbed the social ladder and built their fortunes. The photographic portraits included in the volume give readers a great sense of being close to these figures of the past.
In French writing, the Second Empire “life of pleasure” was a recurrent theme throughout the late 19th-century, and continued to be so during the 20th, hence Alain Decaux's Amours Second Empire in 1958 (Hachette), and André Castelot's La féerie impériale (Perrin 1973).
Author: Frédéric Loliée
Title: La fête impériale
Publisher and date of publication: Paris: F. Joven, 1907.
Physical description: XI-371 p., grav.: portr., in-8°
Author: LHEUREUX-PRÉVOT, Chantal