author
Maxime Vuillaume
1844–1925
A vivid witness to the Paris Commune, he moved between engineering, journalism, and political writing, leaving behind memoirs that helped fix a turbulent moment in French history in readers’ minds.
1 Audiobook
Mes cahiers rouges au temps de la Commune
by Maxime Vuillaume
About the author
Born in Saclas, France, in 1844, Maxime Vuillaume trained as an engineer but became closely tied to the radical politics and journalism of his time. During the Paris Commune of 1871, he was involved with the newspaper Le Père Duchêne, and after the Commune’s defeat he spent years in exile before eventually returning to France.
Vuillaume’s life did not stay in one lane. He worked as an engineer, including on major tunnel projects, and also wrote pamphlets, journalism, and popular science. That mix of technical knowledge and political engagement gives his work an unusual energy.
He is now remembered above all for Mes cahiers rouges au temps de la Commune, a memoir that offers a lively, personal account of revolutionary Paris. He died in 1925, leaving a body of work that still matters to readers interested in the Commune, nineteenth-century France, and the people who tried to record history from inside it.