Jean Lorrain

Fards and Poisons, originally published in 1903 and here made available for the first time in English in a translation by Brian Stableford, is one of the more eccentric works of the ever-eccentric Jean Lorrain. Defying the standard narrative expectations of short stories, the items in this volume might be seen as a series of gossipy character sketches, of actresses and mystics, gigolos and dowagers, of an entire rogues gallery of fin de si cle types, which help explain how the author gained a reputation for corrupting public morals by literary means. Resembling fragments excised from a kind of endless series of conversations, the result is a strange literary collage that is perhaps the most quintessential of Lorrain's works: the slice of his life that pins his own literary persona most precisely, like a lepidopterist's long pin. Included in the current volume, and for the first time republished since its initial appearance in Le Journal, is also the short story "Victim", for which Lorrain was disastrously sued, and convicted of, libel, the court imposing a massive punitive fine on the author and sentencing him to two months imprisonment, though the rulings were later overturned.

Stories to Read by Candlelight contains eight stories first published in the 1890s by the French author, Jean Lorrain, translated here into English by Patricia Worth. Jean draws the reader back in time to his provincial childhood when his grandmother's seamstress would tell him stories that gave him goose bumps and made him jump under the covers. Here he recounts these same stories, or invents new half-lived half-dreamed stories born of objects found in an attic or an old house. The characters have a mythical quality, whether they be fantastical beings who long to be real, like the embroidered Princess Mandosiane, or real people like Madame Gorgibus, accused of being a wicked fairy. The stories fall between legends and fairy tales, a genre favoured by a few Decadent authors protesting against realism and regretting technological progress.

Errant Vice, here presented in English for the first time in a translation by Brian Stableford, is one of the key compositions of the Decadent Movement. A blackly comic novel starring Count Wladimir Noronsoff, the last of an accursed branch of a Russian aristocratic family, this is arguably the most outrageous of Jean Lorrain's works, with a richness of perversity and a quasi-imperial craziness in which the C te d'Azur is an arena where echoes of Byzantium resound. This is a novel of fascinating moral and artistic complexity which, with its horror and sadness, humor and tragedy, is the climax of the author's career.

Heures d'Afrique / Jean LorrainDate de l' dition originale: 1899Sujet de l'ouvrage: Afrique -- Descriptions et voyages -- 19e si cleLe pr sent ouvrage s'inscrit dans une politique de conservation patrimoniale des ouvrages de la litt rature Fran aise mise en place avec la BNF. HACHETTE LIVRE et la BNF proposent ainsi un catalogue de titres indisponibles, la BNF ayant num ris ces oeuvres et HACHETTE LIVRE les imprimant la demande. Certains de ces ouvrages refl tent des courants de pens e caract ristiques de leur poque, mais qui seraient aujourd'hui jug s condamnables. Ils n'en appartiennent pas moins l'histoire des id es en France et sont susceptibles de pr senter un int r t scientifique ou historique. Le sens de notre d marche ditoriale consiste ainsi permettre l'acc s ces oeuvres sans pour autant que nous en cautionnions en aucune fa on le contenu. Pour plus d'informations, rendez-vous sur www.hachettebnf.fr