This book offers the first comprehensive close reading in any language of the complete works of Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). Taking full account of his critical writings on literature and the fine arts, it provides fresh readings of Les Fleurs du Mal and Le Spleen de Paris. It situates these works within the context of nineteenth-century French literature and culture and reassesses Baudelaire's reputation as the 'father' of modern poetry. Whereas he is traditionally co...

At the age of fifty Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98) spoke of his published work as ‘very precise reference points on my mind’s journey’. In Stéphane Mallarmé, Roger Pearson charts that journey for the first time, blending a biographical account of the poet's life with a detailed analysis of his evolving poetic theory and practice. ‘A poet on this earth must be uniquely a poet’, he declared at the age of twenty-two, and he duly lived a poet’s life. But what is a poet's life? What is a ...

During much of his life Voltaire's plays and verse made him the toast of society, but his barbed wit and commitment to reason also got him into trouble. Jailed twice and eventually banished by the King, he was an outspoken critic of religious intolerance and persecution. His personal life was as colourful as his intellectual one. Voltaire never married, but had long-term affairs with two women: Emilie, who died after giving birth to the child of another lover, and his niece, Marie-Louise, ...

Candide is the most famous of Voltaire's 'philosophical tales', in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good sense. This edition includes four other prose tales - Micromegas, Zadig, The Ing--ecirc--;nu, and The White Bull - and a verse tale based on Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale,: What Pleases the Ladies. - ;'If this is the best of all possible worlds, then what must the others be like?' Young Candide is tossed on a hilarious tide of misfortune, experiencing the f...

`every heart imagines itself the first to thrill to a myriad sensations which once stirred the hearts of the earliest creatures and which will again stir the hearts of the last men and women to walk the earth' What is a life? How shall a storyteller conceive a life? What if art means pattern and life has none? How, then, can any story be true to life? These are some of the questions which inform the first of Maupassant's six novels, A Life (Une Vie) (1883) in whi...

Did possessing and killing amount to the same thing deep within the dark recesses of the human beast? La Bete humaine (1890), is one of Zola's most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered this his `most finely worked' novel, and in it he powerfully evokes life at the end of the Second Empire in France, where ...

Brought to you by Penguin.Considered by André Gide to be one of the ten greatest novels in the French language, Germinal is a brutal depiction of the poverty and wretchedness of a mining community in northern France under the second empire. At the centre of the novel is Etienne Lantier, a handsome 21 year-old mechanic, intelligent but with little education and a dangerous predisposition to murderous, alcoholic rage. Germinal tells the parallel story of Etienne's re...

The Masterpiece is the tragic story of Claude Lantier, an ambitious and talented young artist from the provinces who has come to conquer Paris and is conquered by the flaws in his own genius. While his boyhood friend Pierre Sandoz becomes a successful novelist, Claude's originality is mocked at the Salon and turns gradually into a doomed obsession with one great canvas. Life - in the form of his model and wife Christine and their deformed child Jacques - is sacrificed on the altar...

One Luckì DayOne night. One meeting. One twist of fate.Luckì Prince Cunningbur never thought his career in high-profile event planning would lead him straight into the path of Hollywood's brightest star-Jade Star. She is beautiful, successful, and untouchable, but behind the cameras and flashing lights, she carries the weight of a devastating past.For years, Jade has built a world w...

The Blue and You: The Cop's Son Edition (Bita Vol. 2) Companion Novel to BITA Vol. 1- One Lucki Day"Newtone" Roberts never wanted to be a cop-he wanted to be a legend. But when his family is slaughtered before his eyes, his past catches up to him in a way he never saw coming.A former hustler turned devoted father, Newtone thought he had buried the streets along with his old reputation. Dominic Masiello, a ruthless mob boss with a personal vendetta, has othe...

He was raised with everything. He was given away first.Asher Vanderbilt V has money that will outlive him and a name that opens rooms. He also has one wall in a rented apartment where the whole of his life is pinned in ordered columns — report cards, class lists, photographs in runs, tape in three generations — a childhood filed like a stranger's case, because it is the one part of the story he was inside of and still cannot read.He believes his mother gave him away. He has...

A promising young banker is killed in a Dublin alleyway. Two very different detectives try to find the murderer. A DEADLY DIVIDEND is the first book in a new series of murder mysteries by best-selling author David Pearson, whose other Irish crime fiction has topped the charts.A night out turns into a nightmare for a young man who is killed in Dublin’s city centre. Once a street brawl or mugging is ruled out, it begins to look like he was targeted. But why? DI Aidan Burke struggles ...