Hewitt makes her subject’s life an armature on which to hang a history of the Belle Époque, and she includes erudite digressions into the major events of the time – the Franco-Prussian War, for example, or the Exposition Universelle of 1889, whose opening was crowned by the newly erected Eiffel Tower. There are copious footnotes and a bibliography that runs to several pages. …this […] entertaining book
