In "The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns," Benjamin Constant presents a profound philosophical exploration of freedom, contrasting the collective liberty of ancient republics with the individual liberties cherished in modern society. Written in a concise yet elegant prose style, Constant utilizes a rich historical context, drawing comparisons from classical political theory while wrestling with the implications of Enlightenment thought. This pivotal work dissects the essen...

Adolphe is just past the his coming-of-age, but has a much more room to grow. As the son of a government official, Adolphe has a privilege of comfortable wealth and access to a good education, however, he feels trapped in routine, boredom, and a bleak world. Shaped by his childhood, Adolphe has a melancholy outlook on life, turning him into an introverted young man. After he graduates from college, Adolphe struggles to find fulfillment, so he travels to Germany for an adventure. There, he ...

Plusieurs écrivains, entraînés par l’amour de l’humanité dans de louables exagérations, n’ont envisagéla guerre que sous ses côtés funestes. Je reconnois volontiers ses avantages.Il n’est pas vrai que la guerre soit toujours un mal. À de certaines époques de l’espèce humaine, elleest dans la nature de l’homme. Elle favorise alors le développement de ses plus belles et de ses plusgrandes facultés. Elle lui ouvre un trésor de précieuses jouissances. Elle le forme ...

In these two remarkable works, a brilliant, vain, long-suffering Frenchman describes the first twenty years of his life and their culmination in a tortured love affair with a possessive older woman. Constant attempted to conceal the fact that these two books were autobiographical. To his friends and acquaintances, however, it was clear that Adolphe was really Benjamin himself. Constant was an able parliamentarian, a champion of liberalism and the author of The History of Religion. Posterit...

Adolphe is a privileged and refined young man, bored by the stupidity he perceives in the world around him. After a number of meaningless conquests, he at last encounters Ellenore, a beautiful and passionate older woman. Adolphe is enraptured and gradually wears down her resistance to his declarations of love. But as they embark on an intense and tortured affair, Ellenore gives way to a flood of emotion that only serves to repel her younger lover - yet he cannot bring himself to leave her ...

Published posthumously, The Red Notebook is an account of the youth of the author of the seminal Romantic novel Adolphe, relating Constant’s eccentric and peripatetic education, his introduction to European high society and the kindling of his literary ambitions as well as his often comic and calamitous early experiences with the opposite sex and the development of his ruinous gambling habit.Part picaresque romp and part Bildungsroman, this is a spirited look at life and Romantic sensibili...

We are such volatile creatures that we finally feel the sentiments we feign.First published in 1816, Adolphe is the story of a young man with all the privileges and advantages of a noble birth, bt who's still haunted by the meaninglessness of life. He seeks distraction in the pursuit of the beautiful, but older and married Ellenore, a fictionalized version of Madame de Stael. The young Adolphe, inexperienced in love, falls for her unexpectedly and falters ...

The Turn of the Screw is a short novel or a novella written by American writer Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story that has lent itself well to operatic and film adaptation. Due to its ambiguous content and narrative skill, The Turn of the Screw became a favorite text of New Criticism. The account has lent itself to dozens of different interpretations, often mutually exclusive, including those of a Freudian nature. Many critics have tried to determine ...

'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' by Edgar Allan PoeDecades before Sherlock Holmes, American author Edgar Allan Poe created the detective story in this remarkable trilogy of short stories featuring genius French criminologist C. Auguste Dupin.'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' represents the beginning of crime fiction. The story was first published in Graham's Magazine in 1841 and has been recognized as the first detective story. Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratioc...

Working under the nom de plume George Eliot, gifted writer Mary Anne Evans made a name for herself as one of the foremost innovators in the realm of realistic fiction. In The Lifted Veil, however, she takes a sharp detour from the detailed depictions that characterized novels such as Middlemarch. In this short novel, Evans explores the realm of extrasensory perception, focusing on a protagonist who seems to have been given the ability to peer into the innermost thoughts of those around him...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW PEARLEdgar Allan Poe invented detective fiction with these three mesmerising stories of a young eccentric named C. Auguste Dupin: 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', 'The Mystery of Marie Rogêt' and 'The Purloined Letter'. Dorothy L. Sayers would later describe these tales as 'almost a complete manual of detective theory and practice'. Indeed, Poe's short mysteries inspired the creation of countless literary sleuths, among them Sherlock Holmes. Today th...

Since their first publication in the 1830s and 1840s, Edgar Allan Poe's extraordinary Gothic tales have established themselves as classics of horror fiction and have also created many of the conventions which still dominate the genre of detective fiction. Yet, as well as being highly enjoyable, Poe's tales are works of very real intellectual exploration. Abandoning the criteria of characterization and plotting in favour of blurred boundaries between self and other, will and morality, ident...