The book argues that images of the Paris urchin addressed transformations at the heart of modernity, including the decline of patriarchal, monarchical social structures and the rise of industrial capitalism and colonialism. It parses a contested national archetype that emerged from repeated, recycled representations of revolutions (1830, 1832, 1848, 1871). "Brown's meticulously researched illuminating study of the trajectory of the gamin across the nineteenth century makes a compelling case for the centrality of the gamin topos in French visual culture ... In her perceptive critical reading of individual images Brown offers a compelling demonstration of the challenges and rewards of examining visual culture in relation to political events and the vicissitudes of history." --Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide