Lissagaray participated in the Paris Commune and, in popular myth, had been called the "last man on the barricades".

[1] He first published a short sketch of what would become his Histoire at the end of 1871, entitled Les huit journée de mai derrière les barricades, with Le Petit Journal in Brussels.

[2] Lissagaray's father-in-law, Karl Marx, was a strong advocate for the work's translation into German and pursued a potential simultaneous release in the language.

Marx considered the book the "first authentic" account of the event and was involved in vetting the German translator despite previously having ill will towards Lissagaray.

[4] Histoires became the definitive eyewitness assessment of the Paris Commune.