Driven by intense pressure from powerful temperance groups, traditional wine lobbies, and widespread public moral panic surrounding the violent crimes of 'absinthism', France formally banned the manufacture and sale of absinthe, following similar prohibitions in Switzerland and the United States. The high-proof, emerald-green anise spirit, infused with wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), had been the most popular alcoholic beverage of nineteenth-century urban culture. The prohibition forced a sudden restructuring of continental European drinking habits and distillery economies.

Known as 'La Fée Verte' (The Green Fairy), absinthe had served for decades as the primary creative muse and destructive obsession for Decadent and Symbolist poets like Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud. The criminalization of the drink was mourned in a massive wave of elegiac, rebellious avant-garde poetry that treated the ban as a direct, authoritarian assault on creative liberty and artistic bohemian culture.