I’ve been researching the life and works of Paschal Grousset, the radical journalist, Paris Communard and science fiction writer, whose odd little political utopia-in-a-newpaper, The Dream of an Irreconcilable I recently translated. It’s not everyday that I can indulge both my interest in radical history and my interest in early science fiction at the same time. I’ve been reading some of his untranslated adventure stories, with an eye to translating some of them, and in the process of looking for details on a work I had not yet seen, found two English-language accounts of Grousset’s experiences during and after the Paris Commune.

How the Paris Commune Made the Republic (1879)

Leaves from the Pocket-Book of a State Prisoner (1880-1881)

The second account seems to leave off about where Les condamnés politiques en Nouvelle-Calédonie, récit de deux évadé, a work he co-wrote with François Jourde (identified in some sources as a “Proudhonian”), begins, so it should be possible to bring together quite a few biographical details by translating that work (which is already high in my translating pile) and uniting it with the others.