E-Book, Englisch, Band 26, 7413 Seiten
Reihe: Delphi Series Nine
E-Book, Englisch, Band 26, 7413 Seiten
Reihe: Delphi Series Nine
ISBN: 978-1-78877-921-0
Verlag: Delphi Classics Ltd
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Sue's life and works
* Informative introductions to the novels
* 31 novels, with individual contents tables
* The complete text of the 1845 anonymous translation of 'The Mysteries of Paris'
* The complete saga of novels 'The Mysteries of the People', translated by Daniel de Leon
* The complete novels of 'The Seven Cardinal Sins', anonymous 1899 translation, published by Francis A. Niccolls
* Features rare novels appearing for the first time in digital publishing, including 'Arthur'
* Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts
* Excellent formatting of the texts
* Famous works such as 'The Mysteries of Paris' and 'The Wandering Jew' are fully illustrated with their original artwork
* Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and genres
Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles
CONTENTS:
The Mysteries of Paris
The Mysteries of the People
The Gold Sickle
The Brass Bell
The Iron Collar
The Silver Cross
The Casque's Lark
The Poniard's Hilt
The Branding Needle
The Abbatial Crosier
The Carlovingian Coins
The Iron Arrow-Head
The Infant's Skull
The Pilgrim's Shell
The Iron Pincers
The Iron Trevet
The Executioner's Knife
The Pocket Bible
The Blacksmith's Hammer
The Sword of Honor
The Galley Slave's Ring
The Seven Cardinal Sins
Pride
Luxury
Gluttony
Envy
Indolence
Avarice
Anger
Other Novels
Arthur
The Knight of Malta
The Wandering Jew
A Romance of the West Indies
Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of exciting titles or to purchase this eBook as a Parts Edition of individual eBooks
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
The Mysteries of Paris
Anonymous 1845 translation, published by Chapman and Hall Illustrated by Mercier, Bicknell, Poiteau and Adrian Marcel Published in French as Les Mystères de Paris, this novel began as a long, 150-part serial, appearing in the conservative periodical Journal des Débats. It appeared from 19 June 1842 until 15 October 1843 and was one of the first serial novels to be published in France. Les Mystères de Paris was also produced as a ten volume set and appeared in many other abridged and translated formats. A contemporary encyclopaedia claimed Sue was encouraged to write the novel after noting the great success of Frédéric Soulié’s 1842 novel, Memoires du Diable; however, Sue’s reasons for embarking on this project were primarily pragmatic — the inheritance he had received from his father in 1830 had all been spent and he needed a steady source of income. In contrast to his previous endeavours – surgeon’s assistant and author of nautical and adventure novels – the series was an immediate success and may have single-handedly increased the periodical’s circulation, even saving it from bankruptcy. As was common practice at the time, each instalment was placed on the front page, in the bottom quarter of the sheet. The novel is classed as a ‘city mystery’, a genre many authors imitated, including Emile Zola (Les Mystères de Marseille) and George Lippard (The Quaker City). The complexities of plot and the many characters have also been credited with inspiring Victor Hugo to write Les Misérables – it was Hugo that gave Sue the accolade of ‘The Dickens of Paris’. However, some commentators have detected in the plot and choice of scenes elements from previous Gothic fiction and other authors had already explored the theme of social realism in their stories – George Sand, Honoré de Balzac and Restif de la Bretonne. Nevertheless, the scale and complexity of Sue’s work brought together many more threads than theirs. Present day readers may see in the hero, Rodolphe, a prototype for the ‘avenger’ or ‘justice figure’ hero in modern thrillers, as Rodolphe walks the squalid streets of Paris seeking a raw justice for those that transgress his own moral code. The grand sweep of the novel, with its large cast of characters from all walks of society, is essentially a struggle between good and evil, but although well intentioned, it did not appeal to the intellectuals of the day — Karl Marx (writing in The Holy Family in 1845) claimed it was more a pastiche of the misery of the poor people that Sue intended to portray sympathetically and that the characters were mere caricatures. By contrast, others saw the story as dangerously socialist in tone and partly responsible for the whipping up of dissent prior to the 1848 revolution. However, such criticisms were very much a minority and the thousands that awaited each new episode in the Journal were gripped by the length and complexity of the tale. The novel has been put forward for the accolade of the most successful novel of all time, with a vast readership that cannot even be quantified – apart from those who bought the journal each time, the instalments were read aloud in cafés and village squares, to those who could not read or afford the journal and it was discussed on a daily basis in the same manner as people would discuss a modern television soap opera today. Apart from financial security (in 1980 prices, the story earned Sue approximately $100,000), the story catapulted Sue to the position of expert on the genre of the roman-feuilleton (“newspaper serial”). From the 1850’s, it has been suggested periodically that Sue had started out writing a story focussing on the squalid nature of working class life in Paris, but his working class fans wrote him so many letters urging him to emphasise the nobility of the working man that he soon changed tack. Now he made the peasant character people of the highest moral calibre, thus almost accidentally becoming a champion of the people. Some modern academics have seen the story as an early champion of laissez-faire bourgeois liberalism – sometimes scathingly referred to as ‘bleeding heart liberalism.’ Possibly the truth is somewhere in the middle; Sue never challenges the existing social structure, but does try to encourage the middle classes to use their power and income to help and support those less fortunate, noblesse oblige, rather than revolution; yet the journal Le Courrier de l’Europe, in an article about Sue and his work, stated of his portrayal of Chorineur: ‘there is not a more profound study… which exposes more wisely the vice of existing society.’ Another less appealing criticism levelled at the story is that it titillated the middle class readership of the Journal, readers who did not encounter such vile conditions in their everyday lives. Later in the century such forays into the lives of the lowest classes was known as ‘slumming’, visiting such areas as the Ile de la Cite and the East End of London, to witness the abjectly poor and brutalised, living their lives, almost as one would a freak show, yet doing little to help. Undoubtedly of the many readers of Sue’s story, some would have felt this vicarious thrill, but it is unlikely to have been a driving force in the plotting of the series. Sue does distinguish however between the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’ poor, not directly, but in his depiction of leading peasant characters as having a code of honour of their own, as opposed to lesser characters that seem irredeemably bad and are taken away by the police or come to a bad end. From the very beginning, the story takes us into the dangerous and low class side of Parisian life in 1838, among the squalid taverns and haunts of prostitutes of the Ile de la Cite, ‘that labyrinth of obscure, narrow and winding streets which extends from the Palais de Justice to Notre Dame.’ It is a dark, windy night and we follow a well-built man in peasant garb along the narrow streets lined with decrepit and rotting buildings, some of which are low-class drinking establishments known as tapis-franc. Despite this description of a poor and dangerous district, Sue lays down his first challenge to our preconceptions of social norms, labelling the local gentry as the people that ‘infested the vicinity’. The man in peasant clothing is Le Chourineur (the butcher), a violent ex-prisoner, who is soon challenged for his brutish behaviour towards La Goualeuse (also known as Fleur de Marie, a sixteen year old girl of the streets), by a mysterious young man in his thirties. Chourineur is soundly beaten and in the manner of the criminal fraternity, now declares the mysterious assailant as his master; the unlikely trio then walk to the White Rabbit bar, a haunt of criminals and drunkards, where the as yet unnamed man buys them all a supper. The bar is as rough and threatening as the streets of the Ile and it is here that La Goualeuse’s rescuer is named as La Rodolphe, ‘a young man of slight and graceful make’ and ‘elegant shape and carriage’ with ‘grace suppleness and power’, whose delicate good looks belie his strong physique and determined, honourable character. He tells his guests that he is of peasant stock and a fan painter by trade, but what he does not reveal is that he is really an aristocrat, the Grand Duke of Gerolstein, who is living incognito amongst the poor of Paris so he can better understand their problems and the overall social structure of a society that oppresses them — he has even perfected the dialect of the streets so he fits in completely. Chourineur and La Goualeuse, however, have had genuinely turbulent existences, both orphans with an uncertain, even abusive start to life, followed by spells in detention, encounters with violence, exploitation, deep poverty and brutalisation – yet there is a humour in them still and a unique moral code; for instance, Chourineur is violent and confrontational, but prides himself on never having stolen in his life. As Rodolphe says of his unlikely dinner companion, Chourineur has ‘heart and honour.’ They do not realise that Rodolphe also experienced an unconventional upbringing at the hands of Polidori, a dysfunctional tutor, who in effect attempted to brainwash his charge. To Rodolphe’s annoyance, a figure from his true past appears at the bar – the Countess Sarah MacGregor, to whom he was briefly married and with whom he had a daughter. Sarah is cold hearted and ambitious and is obsessively in pursuit of Rodolphe to the extent that she has disguised herself in male attire to pursue him, but on this occasion he has been warned of her arrival by the watchfulness of his friend and associate, an Englishman named Murphy (also disguised as a peasant) and has escaped. Sarah is accompanied by her brother, Thomas Seyton — they make a haughty and unlikely pair of visitors to the bar, where fights and brutality are the norm. Meanwhile, the conspicuous affluence of Lady Sarah and her brother makes them easy prey for footpads, but Sarah has courage and bribes one of the villains to help her track down her former lover, Rodolphe. What she fails to notice is that she is observed by Chourineur, who is now fiercely loyal to Rodolphe, revealing her plan to his new friend. In the meantime, charmed and intrigued by the destitute young woman,...
