Parisian Boulevard, Edouard Cortez

— were indigent writers, 672 of them in Paris alone. They were mostly hacks, says Robert Danton who has pieced together the life of the author of Les Bohemiens, a two-volume novel from 1790, a “lost masterpiece” that started it all.

Consider this during Puccini’s La Boheme. Or Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge: The bohemians often made their livings as professional libellers.