author
Charles Inman Barnard
1850–1942
A longtime American journalist in Paris, he captured the opening days of World War I with the sharp eye of a reporter and the immediacy of a diary. His writing brings a famous city under sudden strain vividly to life.
1 Audiobook
Paris War Days: Diary of an American
by Charles Inman Barnard
About the author
Born in 1850 and dying in 1942, Charles Inman Barnard was an American writer and journalist best known for Paris War Days: Diary of an American. The record of his work and library authority listings identify him as an author active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The strongest contemporary details come from the front matter of Paris War Days, which presents him as an LL.B. from Harvard, Paris correspondent of The New York Tribune, president of the Association of the Foreign Press in Paris, and chairman of the Harvard Club of Paris. In that same book, Barnard explains that he had served as the paper's Paris correspondent for sixteen consecutive years and had been preparing to retire from active journalism when the crisis of 1914 unfolded.
That background helps explain the appeal of his work: Barnard was not writing from a distance, but from inside Paris as war approached. His best-known book stands out as a firsthand, observant account of the city during the first weeks of World War I, mixing the instincts of a seasoned correspondent with the pace and feeling of daily life.