RECOMMENDED: HISTORY OF THE COMMUNE OF 1871 BY COMMUNARD REFUGEE PIERRE-OLIVIER LISSAGARY, TRANSLATED BY KARL MARX'S DAUGHTER AND READABLE ON THE WEB
As well:
- The Civil War in France by Karl Marx
- The War against Paris (1981) and The Paris Commune 1871 (1991) by Robert Tombs. A Cambridge professor's conservative point of view.
- A three-page story from the right: Alphonse Daudet's The Battle of Père Lachaise. Communards surrender without fighting after an orgy in the tombs: English translation online.
- A novel: Liberty's Fire by Lydia Syson (2015). Written for teens and useful for adults, particularly the last part on the repression. Reviews here.
Ms. Syson is the great-great granddaughter of N.F. Dryhurst, a teacher at the anarchist school that Louise Michel established in London in 1890, after leaving France to escape the police.
Movie:
The New Babylon, a Soviet silent film (of 1929). The photography is magnificent and the music is 20-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich's first score:
"Wonderful example of how while Hollywood was producing comedies and costume extravaganzas, Soviet directors were creating an entirely different cinema, until it all went so horribly wrong."
-- Web site comment
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A fuller bibliography in French is given here.
Other works are mentioned when relevant.
