‘City of singles’: cosmopolitan prewar Paris’s ‘crazy years’ brought to life

Database of 8m handwritten census entries paints portrait of city that was hub for intellectuals, artists and young, single people

In 1926, James Joyce was working on his novel Finnegans Wake while living in a spacious apartment in the 7th arrondissement of Paris with his partner, Nora Barnacle, and their two adult children, Giorgio and Lucia.

Joyce's neighbours in the elegant stone building at 2 Square de Robiac included a Syrian family whose three children had an English nanny called Jessie, Russian emigres, an Egyptian industrialist, and the US writers William and Elizabeth Placida Mahl.