 frontispiece from the 1861 book, engraved by Gustave Moreau after a drawing by Boitard
| | Paris avant les hommes
English title: Paris before Man (translated from French)
by Pierre Boitard
First publication: 1861
Two years after Boitard’s death, a vastly expanded, 500-page version of his 1836/1838 pair of articles was published using the same title, Paris avant les hommes, and with the same time-traveling devil companion who takes Boitard back to prehistory. If only we were still in the time of fairies and genies, maybe I could find one good enough to tell me what the world, or only France, or Paris, or even just the Tuileries Gardens was like, ten or twelve thousand years ago, more or less. 
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