Paris has long been the archetypal literary city. This identification reached its peak in the nineteenth century when Paris could reasonably fulfill Walter Benjamin's claimn for it: that it was the 'capital of the nineteenth century'. In this expansive and entertaining book Christopher Prendergast explores the way writers and others have identified with Paris and been identified with it. He moves between social and cultural history, literature, painting and photography and presents an exemplary series of readings (of Balzac, Hugo, Baudelaire, Michelet, Flaubert, Zola, Valles, Laforgue). Throughout Paris is both the city represented and the very problem of representation.