The unofficial bible of the French Symbolist movement, admired by Mallarmé, Jarry and Gide, in a new translation When Marcel Schwob published The Book of Monelle in French in 1894, it immediately became the unofficial bible of the French Symbolist movement, admired by such contemporaries as Stéphane Mallarmé, Alfred Jarry and André Gide. A carefully woven assemblage of legends, aphorisms, fairy tales and nihilistic philosophy, it remains a deeply enigmatic and haunting work more than a century later, a gathering of literary and personal ruins written in a style that evokes both the Brothers Grimm and Friedrich Nietzsche. The Book of Monelle was the result of Schwob's intense emotional suffering over the loss of his love, a "girl of the streets" named Louise, whom he had befriended in 1891 and who succumbed to tuberculosis two years later. Transforming her into the innocent prophet of destruction, Monelle, Schwob tells the stories of her various sisters: girls succumbing to disillusionment, caught between the misleading world of childlike fantasy and the bitter world of reality. This new translation reintroduces a true fin-de-siècle masterpiece into English. A secret influence on generations of writers, from Guillaume Apollinaire and Jorge Luis Borges to Roberto Bolaño, Marcel Schwob (1867-1905) was as versed in the street slang of medieval thieves as he was in the poetry of Walt Whitman (whom he translated into French). Paul Valéry and Alfred Jarry both dedicated their first books to him, and he was the uncle of Surrealist photographer Claude Cahun.

The nineteen stories contained herein, all beautifully translated for the first time into English by Sue Boswell, combine work published by Marcel Schwob (1867-1905) in newspapers together with manuscripts never published in his lifetime. From historical pieces, such as "Poupa", an early unfinished novel which takes place in ancient Rome, to horrific tales, such as "The Hand of Glory" and "The Maison Close", and others, such as "On Umbrellas", which are completely unclassifiable, the present collection displays the diversity and genius of one of France's greatest yet largely forgotten writers.

"In 1968-69 I wanted to die, that is to say, stop living, being killed, but it was blocked on all sides," wrote Hélène Cixous, esteemed French feminist, playwright, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist. Instead of suicide, she began to dream of writing a tomb for herself. This tomb became a work that is a testament to Cixous's life and spirit and a secret book, the first book she ever authored. Originally written in 1970, Tombe is a Homerian recasting of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis in the thickets of Central Park, a book Cixous provocatively calls the "all-powerful-other of all my books, it sparks them off, makes them run, it is their Messiah." Masterfully translated by Laurent Milesi, Tombe preserves the sonic complexities and intricate wordplay at the core of Cixous's writing, and reveals the struggles, ideas, and intents at the center of her work. With a new prologue by the author, this is a necessary document in the development of Cixous's aesthetic as a writer and theorist, and will be eagerly welcomed by readers as a crucial building block in the foundation of her later work .

The Torch-Bearers tells the story of an itinerant Anarchist preacher who comes to the corrupt city of Geronta in the company of a fellow vagabond, where he begins preaching in parables, that being his preferred method of enlightenment. He hears a number of other story-tellers narrating their own parables, to which he opposes his own in order to expose their ideological flaws. Here, presented in English for the first time in a superb translation by Brian Stableford, is one of the most interesting novels of the Symbolist Movement--the elaborate fruit of author Bernard Lazare's wholehearted commitment to both Symbolist and Anarchist ideals. This striking literary experiment, testing the hypothesis that the raw materials of myth, legend and folklore, which had been redeployed and pastiched so successfully by the Movement, could be adapted to Anarchist purposes.

Pour Lire Au Bai (1884) est un recueil de po�����mes �����crit par l'auteur fran�����ais Catulle Mendes. Les po�����mes sont caract�����ris�����s par leur style lyrique et leur th�����me romantique. Le titre du livre est un jeu de mots sur ""pour lire au lit"", sugg�����rant que les po�����mes sont destin�����s ������ ������tre lus dans un endroit confortable et intime. Les po�����mes se concentrent sur des th�����mes tels que l'amour, la beaut�����, la nature et la mort. Les po�����mes sont �����crits en vers libres et en prose po�����tique. Le livre a �����t����� bien accueilli par la critique de l'�����poque et est consid�����r����� comme l'un des meilleurs travaux de Mendes.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.