My chapter in book "The Flâneur Abroad: Historical and International Perspectives"

Have you ever heard the word flâneur? These are some commonly used definitions:

* "an idle man-about-town" Merriam Webster Dictionary

* "an idler or loafer" Collins Dictionary

* "a man who saunters around observing society" Oxford Dictionaries

A new book - "The Flâneur Abroad: Historical and International Perspectives" (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014) exploring the world of the flâneur and flânerie has just been published. Link to the publishers website. The book developed from a conference of the same name held at the University of Nottingham in England in July 2012. The conference was organised by Prof Richard Wrigley of the Department of Art History at that university.

The book contains sixteen chapters which examine various types of flâneur in various locations around the world. My chapter 'Henri Béraud's Flâneur Salarié Abroad in Ireland' looks at an unusual type of flâneur who visited Ireland, an unusual destination for this mythic character, who is more usually associated with the great European cities of London and Paris.

The flâneur is a curious type of character who sprang to consciousness in the 19th century through the work of writers such as Charles Baudelaire. Below is a page from the book Physiologie du Flâneur by the French journalist, Louis Huart. Illustrations are by three celebrated illustrators, Marie-Alexandre Adolphe, Honoré Daumier and Théodore Maurisset. This image is taken from Gallica, the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Link http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8530312c/f10.image The book is also available to view on The Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/physiologiedufla00huar