Despite the scholarship and political activism devoted to keeping the memory of the Paris Commune alive, there still remains much ignorance both in France and elsewhere. Between 20,000 and 35,000 people were killed on the streets of Paris in just the final week of the traumatic civil war of 1871. Colette Wilson identifies a critical blind-spot in French studies and employs new critical approaches to neglected texts, marginalized aspects of the illustrated press, early photography, and a selection of novels by Emile Zola. This book will be of interest to students and academics studying France in the 19th century from a number of different perspectives: war and revolution studies, cultural studies, history and cultural memory, literature, art history, photography, the illustrated press, city studies, and human geography.