Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris

It has long been acknowledged as an invaluable source of information on the life and times of the city of Paris in the first half of the 15th century, a period marked by the Hundred Years' War and the English occupation of part of the kingdom of France.

Finally, it provides a wealth of information on daily life at the time, including: food and wine prices, religious processions,[5] weather, deaths from epidemics, the level of the Seine, attacks by wolves in the city,[6] and the suffering caused by the numerous domestic and international armed conflicts.

[2][7]The text of the Journal shows clearly that, for many years, the author was a fierce partisan of the Burgundy faction in the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war, the conflict that dominated most aspects of life in Paris and in France more generally.

The author's pro-Burgundian views were aligned with those of Paris's commoners and with the academics at the University, who hoped that the Burgundians would be able to rein in the excesses of the French monarchy, including in fiscal and monetary matters.

[7] By 1423, however, he becomes disillusioned with the Burgundians and their English allies (noting, for example, that they caused nearly as much suffering in the countryside as the Armagnacs) and, by the end of the Journal, he accepts the legitimacy of Charles VII as the French king.

It occupies the first 208 pages of La Barre's collection of historical documents entitled Memoirs to serve the history of France and Burgundy.

Colette Beaune has edited a more accessible version with updated spelling, a detailed annotations and a glossary[2] and Janet Shirley has translated the Journal into modern English.

This thesis was rejected by Alexandre Tuetey, in his prologue to his 1881 edition, who attributes authorship to the canon of Notre-Dame de Paris, Jean Chuffart.

[8] This identification was rejected in turn by Colette Beaune in her introduction to the 1990 edition, where she notes that he was too often absent from Paris to be the author (based on the article devoted to Chuffart in the fourth volume of the Chartularium universitatis parisiensis by Denifle).