Journal (August–September 1870)
Fragments from the 1870 Journal.
Edmond de Goncourt
Nancy, 1822–Paris, 1896. French writer, art critic, and diarist, and a central figure in nineteenth-century Parisian literary life. Together with his brother Jules de Goncourt, he wrote novels, historical studies, and essays on art, marked by a meticulous, sensory prose attentive to the details of modern life. The two brothers were precursors of naturalism and cultivated an almost documentary gaze on society, taste, illness, and decadence. After Jules’s death, Edmond continued the celebrated Journal, a fundamental testimony to French literature of the period. In his will, he founded the Académie Goncourt, which awards the prestigious Prix Goncourt.
