Search Results: French Literature from Louise Aird

This is an unread first edition of Baudelaire, written by the English journalist Joanna Richardson and published in 1990.
It is a full biography of the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), which was a best-seller and very well received by critics.
It's a big book with few photos.
It is mylar-wrapped--you can remove it if you like. The spots you see on the cover are from the price tag. No one has ever read this book, or even opened it. It is in mint condition.

La Dame aux Camélias (The Lady with the Camellias, commonly known as Camille) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas fils, first published in 1848 and adapted by Dumas for the stage. The play was an instant success, it became Verdi's La Traviata and has since been adapted for the stage dozens of time. It has also been made into movies dozens of times, most famously starring Greta Garbo in 1936, and in 2001, when Nicole Kidman starred in Moulin Rouge. It is about a young man who falls in love with a consumptive courtesan.

This copy is undated but was published around 1950 by the Modern Library (Random House). It is gray boards with a navy and gold design. 5" x 7". 270 pages.

All flaws are visible in the photos. The pages have darkened a little. The spine is starting to pull away, just at the front. There is a bump to the cover, at the lower right corner. There is no real shelfwear—just what you see on the spine.

Lovely book.

The Chartreuse of Parma tells the story of an Italian nobleman in the Napoleonic era. It has always been a much-admired book and has been adapted for opera, film and television. This is a lovely book, 535 pages, printed on wood-free paper and bound in scarlet leatherette with a brilliant gold design on the cover and spine.
There is a book plate on the inside front cover, which will come off.
There are several black and white plates inside but the spine has not been cracked and I don't want to open it widely to photograph them.
It has not been read and is in pristine condition.

The Conspirators is a novel written by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet, and published in 1843. Dumas reworked a preliminary version by Maquet; this was the beginning of a collaboration which produced 36 novels and plays. The novel is set in 1718, and its subject is a conspiracy against the regency of Philippe d'Orléans, who led France during the infancy of Louis XV.
The Conspirators is considered to be Dumas greatest work.
This copy is dated 1920-1925.
Burgundy Boards with bright gold lettering and design on the spine.
Includes 4 full-page B&W lithographs
This is a near-perfect copy of this book, save two things; someone put a drink down on the cover, and someone removed the front endpaper. Just the front cover needs cleaning; the rest of the book is in excellent condition. The exterior spine is just as you see it in the photo; the interior spine is perfect.

Anatole France (Francois-Anatole Thibault, 1844-1924) was a French poet, journalist and best-selling novelist. He was considered the ideal French man of letters and, in 1921, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. France wrote 25 novels; The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881) was his second.
It is about a brilliant historian and linguist who kidnaps a young woman to save her from abuse.This copy was published by the Modern Library (Random House) in 1932. It is navy blue boards with a black and gold design on the cover and spine. It has a minimal amount of shelf wear and the pages are clean, bright and unmarked.OF NOTE: It was originally the property of the 97th Hospital of the American Red Cross--that is stamped on the title page.

From the International Collectors Library, this is a mint-condition luxury edition copy of Madame Bovary, the classic novel by the French author Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880).The book, about an unhappy woman who lives beyond her means and has an affair, scandalized society when it was published in 1956, but is now considered to be one of the most influential literary works in history.This copy was published in 1949 and appears to have never been read.Brown/red boards with a gold design. Illustrated. Silk bound-in bookmark.There is slight darkening of the paper, but there is not a mark in it or on it.NOTE: My quoted price for shipping OUTSIDE of North America is for surface mail without tracking. For other shipping options, please contact me.

This is a very readable copy of a 1902 printing of Mauprat, the 1837 novel by the iconic French writer George Sand (Amantine Dupin). It is a love story but it explores the issue of education for women and examines a woman's traditionally passive role in a marriage.This copy is dated 1902. It is lime green cloth-covered boards with a fleur de lis design on the spine. There is a portrait of her at the front, and a section of portraits of her at the back--she was painted on numerous occasions, and photographed.427 pages.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Lord of Montaigne (1533 – 1592) was a French statesman and one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. It was he who popularized the essay as a literary genre, and his volume Essais contains some of the most influential essays ever written.
This is 14 of his essays; topics include Idleness, the Education of Children, Friendship, Solitude, Repentance and Vanity.
This is a 'best of' collection, was published by Walter J Black for the Classics Club in 1943 and reprinted in 1970.
It is beige tweed boards with red and brilliant gold on the cover and spine; the top pages are dyed red.
364 pages.
Unread and pristine. There is one flaw--bits of red have started to come off the spine, as you can see in the photo.

This is a first edition from the classics series published by International Collectors Library in 1970.It is two novels.
Pere Goriot (or Old Goriot)is an 1835 novel by Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Set in Paris in 1819, it follows the intertwined lives of three characters: the elderly doting Goriot, a mysterious criminal-in-hiding named Vautrin, and a naive law student named Eugène de Rastignac. It is considered Balzac's most important novel and it has often been adapted for film and the stage. It also is the base of the French expression 'Rastignac', which is a term for a social climber willing to do anything to get ahead.
Eugenie Grandet is an 1833 novel which Balzac continued into his Human Comedy series. It is the story of a young woman whose wealthy but tight-fisted father tries to arrange a financially advantageous marriage for her when she falls in love with her penniless cousin.
This is a lovely… Read More

The is a nice little Modern Library copy of Pere Goriot & Eugenie Grandet, published in 1950. It is two novels in one book.
Pere Goriot (or Old Goriot)is an 1835 novel by Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Set in Paris in 1819, it follows the intertwined lives of three characters: the elderly doting Goriot, a mysterious criminal-in-hiding named Vautrin, and a naive law student named Eugène de Rastignac. It is considered Balzac's most important novel and it has often been adapted for film and the stage. It also is the base of the French expression 'Rastignac', which is a term for a social climber willing to do anything to get ahead.
Eugenie Grandet is an 1833 novel which Balzac continued into his Human Comedy series. It is the story of a young woman whose wealthy but tight-fisted father tries to arrange a financially advantageous marriage for her when she falls in love with her penniless cousin.
This book is… Read More

Anatole France (Francois-Anatole Thibault, 1844-1924) was a French poet, journalist and best-selling novelist. He was considered the ideal French man of letters and, in 1921, won the Nobel Prize in Literature.France wrote 25 novels; Penguin Island (1908) was his 21st.
It is a sprawling satirical novel about a fictitious island, inhabited by great auks, that existed off the northern coast of Europe. A wayward Christian missionary monk lands on the island and sees the upright, unafraid auks as a sort of pre-Christian society of noble pagans. Mostly blind from reflections from the polar ice and deaf from the roar of the sea, having mistaken the animals for humans, he baptizes them. This causes a problem for The Lord, who normally only allows humans to be baptized. After consulting with saints and theologians in Heaven, He resolves the dilemma by converting the baptized birds to humans with only a few physical traces of their ornithological origin,and giving them each a soul. Thus begins the… Read More

This is a mint-condition copy of The Red and The Black, A Chronicle of the 19th Century, the brilliant novel written in 1830 by the great French author Stendhal (Henri Beyle).
It is a social satire, and psychological novel, about the ambitious, social-climbing, manipulative Julian Sorel, who becomes the pawn of the ruthless people around him.
This copy was published by The Heritage Press in 1974. It is a large heavy book; 7" x 10 1/2". 450 pages of beautiful paper. It uses the 1926 illustrations by the German-American artist Rafaello Busoni (1900-1962).
It comes in a black slipcase which has a lot of fading. But the book does not appear to have been read; it is pristine.

Marie-Henri Beyle (1783-1842), who wrote under the name Stendhal, is considered 'the father of the psychological novel'.
Le Rouge et le Noir (1830) is one of his best-known books--the other is The Chartreuse of Parma, or La Chartreuse de Parme, 1839, which I also have listed here.
The Red and the Black
Modern Library (Random House) 1958
Green boards with a black and gold design on the cover and spine. There's a white mark on the top of the cover—it could be dust. Minor shelf wear. The inside is spotless with clean bright pages.
Story:
This tale chronicles the attempts of a provincial young man to rise socially beyond his modest upbringing through a combination of talent, hard work, deception, and hypocrisy.
It has been adapted for film and television many times.

The is a very nice copy of Selected Tales of Guy de Maupassant, published by Random House in 1950. It is 49 short stories written by the French master. See photo and scan of contents.It is illustrated by the American artist and lithographer Adolf Dehn.7 x 10, 334 pagesRed and black boards with gilt design on the spine.

There is almost no shelfwear but there is the odd faint mark on the cover and some fingerprints on the back. The spine is perfect, inside and out.

It appears to have not been read.
Inside, it is pristine.

These are shelf-mates, part of the series of classics published by Collins Clear-Type Press c 1920. I can't find other copies of them for sale anywhere else.
Both are 4 ¼"x 6 ¼", both are brown-red cloth.
Both have book plates that can be steamed off. Shelf wear is minor.
They need cleaning; they don't have any stains, but they have a sort of accumulation of specks on them—someone needs to give them a good brushing.
Toilers of the Sea was published in 1866. It is dedicated to the island of Guernsey, where Hugo spent 15 years in exile. Hugo uses the setting of a small island community to transmute seemingly mundane events into drama of the highest calibre; it is set just after the Napoleonic Wars and deals with the impact of the Industrial Revolution upon the island.
470 pages
One full-page black and white image.
From the endpapers to page 15, there are creases, plus an ink mark. Spine is very tight.
Otherwise fine; it doesn't appear to have been read.
Ninety-Three is Hugo's last novel. Published… Read More