Scenes of Bohemian Life

Rather, it is a collection of loosely related stories, all set in the Latin Quarter of Paris in the 1840s, romanticizing bohemian life in a playful way.

[1] Although the stories were popular within the small literary community, they initially failed to reach a larger audience or generate much income for Murger.

This changed in 1849, after Murger was approached by Théodore Barrière, an up-and-coming young playwright, who proposed writing a play based on the stories.

A preface discussed the meaning of "bohemian", and a new first chapter served to introduce the setting and the main characters.

[1] The late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing claimed in 1890 to be reading the novel, in French, for the 'twentieth time'.