Catulle Mendès

In three of his contemporary novels, Le Roi vierge (1881), Zo'har (1886), and Mephistophela (1890), Catulle Mendes explores fin-de-siecle society, constructing a chaotic and funereal masquerade in which his characters abandon themselves to the "nzy of desire" and to acts of transgression.

Die 73 Tage der Kommune - Vom 18. M rz bis 29. Mai 1871 ist ein unver nderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe aus dem Jahr 1871. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ern hrung, Medizin und weiteren Genres. Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur. Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquit ten erh ltlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese B cher neu und tr gt damit zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und historischem Wissen auch f r die Zukunft bei.

This edition of Histoires d'amour, Catulle Mendes's first published collection, aims to reinvigorate discussion on this author. The texts gathered here include tales, short stories, and prose poems from different worlds and of various tones, which illustrate the vitality of fantaisiste literature in the mid-nineteenth century.

A standout among his prolific short-fiction output, Catulle Mendes' first Monstres parisiens series (1882) is an essential fin-de-siecle literary work whose obsessions and fundamental themes are condensed in the depiction of various moral atrocities.

Mephistophela, among the most unsettling works of the prolific author Catulle Mend s, was originally published in 1889 and is presented here for the first time in English in a superb translation by Brian Stableford. Telling the story of Baronne Sophor d'Hermelinge, a woman as thoroughly martyrized by her creator as any other heroine in the history of fiction, in spite of the enormous competition for that title established by countless writers, male and female, it is one of the archetypal novels of the Decadent Movement, and one of the most striking, precisely because is it such a discomfiting piece of writing, the deliberately controversial nature of which has been further enhanced as its surrounding social context has changed over time. Highly influential, especially on the works of such writers as Jean Lorrain and Ren e Vivien, Mephistophela, in placing lesbian amour in the foreground of the story, deals forthrightly and intensively with a literary theme that had previously only been treated with delicacy and indecision, mostly in poetry. It is essentially a horror story about demonic possession, about contrived and cruel damnation, devoid even of a Faustian pact, which merely employs obsessive lesbian desire as an instrument of damnation.

For Reading in the Bath, here presented in English for the first time in a delightful translation by Brian Stableford, is one of a number of risqu collections of ultra-short fiction produced by Catulle Mend s (1841-1909) during the fin de si cle. Always poetic, often perverse, and sometimes even chaste, these highly amusing, masterfully constructed tales of amour and immorality, featuring a large cast of Parisian characters, including the ubiquitous Valentin and the many women he pursues, are confections of great artistry that will be happily savored by anyone with a longing for suggestive treats.

This volume is one of a set of three collections assembling a substantial fraction of the short fantastic fiction of Catulle Mendes (1841-1909). It assembles more than eighty contes, fables and apologues employing supernatural motifs

The present volume is one of a set of three collections assembling a substantial fraction of the short fantastic fiction of Catulle Mendes (1841-1909). It assembles 23 tales of the fantastique dealing with anomalous events and altered states of consciousness that might or might not have supernatural causes.

Catulle Mend s (1841-1909) wrote more tales featuring fays than any other French writer--nearly twice as many as Madame d'Aulnoy. However, by the 1880s, the genre had been largely misremembered and remained unread for a hundred years. It is, therefore, unsurprising that Mend s elected to draw his own imaginative raw materials from Shakespeare rather from than any original French sources. Even though his tales feature a different species of fays, Mend s' belated contributions to the genre have closer affinities with it than he may have suspected. He is a deliberately subversive writer, not only employing the narrative dynamic of his fantasies to insist that amour is far from perfect, but frequently applauding certain aspects of that imperfection. This volume provides a useful illustration of a significant, if eccentric, phase in the history of the genre.