Abstract:Histoire de l’argot by Clément Casciani serves as the preface to the Dictionnaire d’argot et des principales locutions populaires (1894) authored by a certain Jean de La Rue (not, in this case, the pen name for Jules Vallès). Drawing on nineteenth-century studies of argot (Nodier, Vidocq, Francisque Michel, Larchey, Victor Hugo, Vitu, among others), this popularized account not only reflects the period’s views on argot but also helped cement them in the popular imagination.
