'Thomas Cragin's book on the popularity of canards — widely circulated, oft-illustrated French broad-sheets, generally covering sensational news such as murder and crime — is eloquent on the relation between form and content in 19th-century mass visual culture. The only study of its kind available in English to date, Cragin offers a comprehensive history of the production, circulation, consumption and ... Read moremeaning of this single prominent type of French popular entertainment in Paris between 1830-1900 . . . . Cragin looks at his topic from all the right angles, and the new source material he has amassed is impressive, to say the least.'
André Dombrowski
French Forum, Spring 2009, 34.2
'Murder in Parisian Streets has something to offer a wide range of readers. This book is, at once, a helpful introduction to this popular print tradition, an interesting consideration of popular views of crime and punishment in nineteenth-century France, and an intriguing view on the limits of cultural change in the nineteenth-century. It is a useful archive in its own right; the book contains seventy-nine pages of black-and-white illustrations, reproductions of canards, illustrations from the mass press, historical photographs, and more. Cragin draws on these nicely to illustrate his argument for the continuity of crime reporting. . . . [This book] will prompt deeper thinking about the contours of cultural change in nineteenth-century France, while bringing attention to an immensely iimportant and all-but-forgotten genre of news.'
Gregory Shaya, College of Wooster
Journal of Modern History
'Murder in Parisian Streets is a pioneering exploration of a forgotten genre of French journalism. These crudely illustrated stories of lurid crimes and hardworking policemen were the ancestors of tabloid journalism and modern detective fiction. Cragin shows us how these broadsheets help us understand nineteenth-century social attitudes and the growth of a popular reading public.'
Jeremy D. Popkin, University of Kentucky Show Less