author
Charles Virmaître
1835–1903
A vivid guide to the hidden sides of nineteenth-century Paris, this French journalist and lexicographer wrote with a taste for street life, slang, and the city’s more scandalous corners.
1 Audiobook
Dictionnaire d'argot fin-de-siècle
by Charles Virmaître
About the author
Born in Paris on January 14, 1835, Charles Virmaître was a French historian, lexicographer, and journalist. Sources consistently describe him as a writer deeply interested in Paris itself, especially its popular life, its slang, and the social worlds that respectable accounts often ignored.
He is best known for books on the city’s customs and underworld, including Paris impur and the Dictionnaire d'argot fin-de-siècle published in 1894. Bibliothèque nationale de France records also show a long list of Paris-centered works, which helps explain why he is remembered as a sharp observer of late nineteenth-century urban life.
Virmaître died in Paris on March 15, 1903. No suitable verified portrait image was confirmed from the pages reviewed, so no profile image is included here.