A Woman's Paris ~ Joie de Vivre

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While Gertrude Stein hosted the literati of the Left Bank, Mrs. Bates-Batcheller, an American socialite and concert singer in Paris, held sumptuous receptions for the Daughters of the American Revolution in her suburban villa. History may remember the American artists, writers, and musicians of the Left Bank best, but the reality is that there were many more American businessmen, socialites, manufacturers’ representatives, and lawyers living on the other side of the River Seine.

Nancy L. Green recounts the experiences of a long-forgotten part of the American expatriate population in The Other Americans in Paris: Businessmen, Countesses, Wayward Youth, 1880-1941, (June 27, 2014, The University of Chicago Press). She introduces us for the first time to the Right Bank American transplants. There were newly minted American countesses married to foreigners with impressive titles, American women married to American businessmen, and many discharged American soldiers who had settled in France after World War I with their French wives. The book details the politics of citizenship, work, and business, and the wealth (and poverty) among the Americans who staked their claim to the City of Light. (Purchase)

“Whether she is taking us into the territory of marriage and divorce…unearthing consular records of American misdeeds, or tracking down the capture of Baby Cadum soaps by Palmolive, she surprises and delights on every page.” —Alice Kaplan, Yale University, author of Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis, and French Lessons: A Memoir

“A fascinating, compelling, and sometimes hilarious look at the Americans of the Right Bank: those who lived across the river from the Lost Generation and belonged to a world apart. Who knew that 90 percent of the interwar Americans in Paris rarely visited Shakespeares’ and never heard of Gertrude Stein? Green’s wonderful book tells the untold story of the American businessmen, lawyers, renters, heiresses, and slackers who created the ‘American colony in Paris’ and never thought of writing the Great American Novel.” —Edward Berenson, New York University, author of The Statue of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story, and The Trial of Madame Caillaux.

Excerpt from The Other Americans in Paris: Businessmen, Countesses, Wayward Youth, 1880-1941, “Reprinted with permission from The Other Americans in Paris: Businessmen, Countesses, Wayward Youth, 1880-1941, by Nancy L. Green, published by the University of Chicago Press. © 2014 University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved.

Nancy L. Green is professor of history at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and a member there of the Centre de Recherches Historiques. She is the author or coeditor of several books, including Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York, Jewish Workers in the Modern Diaspora, Repenser les migrations, and Citizenship and Those Who Leave. She received her Doctorate at the University of Chicago and a Doctorat d’État from the University of Paris VII.

Photo portrait: Cynthia Truant

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