Product Description
While sexual writing today is popular, it pales in comparison to the steamy and graphic, yet romantically inviting works authored during the 19th century. EROTIC TALES includes selections by such renowned authors as Emile Zola, Sir Richard Burton, Bram Stoker, Frank Harris, Charles Devereaux, and of course the inimitable Anonymous. A volume filled with passion with panache. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Anthology
Naturally, as an anthology, you get a mixture of styles.Some steamy and some langsamweilig.One is a direct excerpt from Dracula.One is more a Victorian translation of an Arabian erotic tale (probably not from 1001 nights).

Amazing...
I am very interested in the history of sex.That is one course I'd like to teach after I get my PhD.This book just took me back a little further into sexual history.I was surprised at how old some sexual terms and parts of the body are.I was also surprised with certain actions the characters performed.Today, many of these sexual acts are fully accepted.However, I would have figured the Victorians would have been uptight even in sex.A major misconception.

Finally I'm finding out one poem is even older than I thought."This is my pistol, this is my gun.This one's for fighting, this one's for fun."I'm trying to find erotica and sexual information even older now.It'll be funny to see just how old that poem might be.

Not for the faint at heart
I studied the true Victorian Era for 2+ years and am still intrigued with books relating to the ways of that time. Finally mustering enough nerve to read something provocative, I purchased this book. Lets just say it is exceptionally capable of "stirring" one.

Victorian Tales
Stories are well written by known authors. Many people might love this book. I am not one of them, however.

Erotica at its Best
If you want real erotica instead of the so-called erotica of today, then this is the book for you.Steamy, steamy, steamy! ... Read more

Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Product Description
When French authorities accused Jewish Army captain Alfred Dreyfus of espionage in 1894, the resulting anti-Semitic controversy bitterly divided France and its intellectual world. This book is the first complete edition in English of the pivotal contribution of French novelist Emile Zola to the Dreyfus affair. His impassioned writings represent a classic defense of human rights and a searing denunciation of fanaticism and prejudice, as significant today as when they were written. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

COMPLETE COLLECTION OF ZOLA'S LETTERS DURING DREYFUS AFFAIR
Emile Zola is today the most well known "fighter" in the war to clear Alfred Dreyfus' name in what became known as the Dreyfus Affair in 1890s France.This book compiles Zola's letters (public and not) during this period, with the most famous being J'Accuse, one that earned him a conviction along with stiff fines that eroded his fortune.

Zola is very passionate in Dreyfus' defense, though his passion never leaves behind a devastating logic that made it so difficult to ignore.This is an amazing defense of religious freedom and justice, against prejudice and hatred.Zola manages to weaken, in time, two of the most powerful institution in France at the time: the military and the church.Ten years later the military would no longer play as significant a role in French life, and by 1905 France would pass the law separating Church and State.

After reading the letters, one is filled with Zola's enthusiasm and idealism.Makes one want to go fight injustice and make this a better world.There are very few books about which this can be said.

HISTORY
This is an excellent presentation of historical events by a contemporary. ... Read more

Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Good, The Baffling and the Unusual.
Please don't be alarmed by the caveat suggested by my review title, it's really not as bad as it seems. It's certainly not affected my rating of the book, which is a superb translation altogether: E. P. Robins, under the auspices of ProjectGutenberg. I have the ebook in .lit format, gotten from Abacci, and I wanted a physical copy to hold; I certainly could have purchased the Penguin edition for some ten dollars cheaper, but the translation, pah. It might as well have been translated by William Shatner, and captures none of the grit of the Battle of Sedan, much less the nuanced, provocative homosociality of Jean and Maurice.

That said, I find myself a bit baffled over this Hard Press publishing company and its...legitimacy. I'm not sure how it operates, if it's some sort of third party publisher or what, but I received the book and discovered it was sans title page. I suppose I should have gathered as much while previewing the novel on Amazon (to ascertain the translation), but I simply thought it was omitted from the "Search Inside!" No cataloguing information, no copyright date, not even a mention of the translator or ProjectGutenberg as in the ebook format. Baffling.

Fishiness aside, the print is legible and evenly-spaced, and the binding is unusually sturdy for a springy paperback. Perhaps the substantial weight (451 pages, consolidated from the ebook's 620) demands it. It's a very spare, nondescript edition that belies the evocative prose within; I feel almost like a Soviet-era reader who's gotten my turn with the latest literary contraband by Solzhenitsyn. ... Read more

Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. Translation of La fortune des Rougons. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

You'll have to shop around ...
... for a decent translation of this novel, the first of Emile Zola's 20-book Rougon-Macquart series. The previous reviews suggest that this edition has problems and errata. But the search will be worthwhile, especially if you are excited by some of the later volumes of this monumental portraya of 19th C society and history.

Here's what I wrote about the French edition that I read:

""I wonder what I'd think of this novel if I'd read it without being aware of what came after. "La Fortune des Rougon" is the first of Emile Zola's twenty (20!) novels chronicling the history of French society through the middle decades of the 19th Century by tracing the fortunes of a single family - the Rougon-Macquart kindred - through several generations. I had read several of the most esteemed volumes previously, some in English and some in French, some recently and some decades ago. From that approach, "La Fortune des Rougon" might seem laboriously contrived as a retrospective attempt to tie up all the evolutionary threads of the chronicle; minor characters pop up insistently, who will become major figures in later novels, and the editor 'helpfully' footnotes their future significance. But in fact, this really WAS the first of the series, so it makes slightly more sense to perceive it as an outline of things to come, and it makes Zola's assiduous tenacity of purpose all the more remarkable, as if he truly had a clear conception of the whole monumental series from his first paragraph. I'm trying now, by the way, to read the whole series in French and in 'chronological' order, a project that may take me almost as many years as it took Zola to write it.

But let's take a look at "La Fortune des Rougon" in and of itself, as if Zola had never written another book. It's a hefty novel, a broad 19th Century novel, ample, explicit, and at times unnecessarily discursive. Started in 1869 and published in '71, it is therefore contemporary with classics of English Victorian fiction by Dickens, Eliot and Trollope. I point that out because there's an odd 'dissonance' about reading Zola; the social and psychological perceptions he expresses seem far more modern - more 20th C - than the style and structure of his works. He is unabashedly the "omniscient narrator" of his era, so soon to be jostled out of fashion by writers like Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford. He IS discursive and at times verbose. They all were, in his day. People must have either read faster than we do, or else wanted to get their money's worth out of a book, savoring its verbosity over leisurely weeks. It won't help anyone to appreciate Zola's accomplishment to expect him to be as terse as Joseph Roth or as playfully self-observant as Nabokov. Despite the boldness of his themes, Zola is not a modernist.

He is also not a hack, despite his literary abundance. Yes, he wanted to earn a living at writing, but his ambitions were not to cultivate an audience with facile entertainments. In fact, he intended to be didactic, to expound a theory of human behavior based on evolutionary sociology. Here's something from his preface to "La Fortune des Rougons", translated to English:
""By resolving the double question of temperament and environment, I will try to expose and trace the thread of connection which leads mathematically from one person to another. When I have hold of every thread, and have possession of a complete social group in my hands, I shall show this group in operation, participating in its historical period."

Something of a 'determinist" was our Monsieur Zola? Yes, at times, and especially when referring to social caste. But in fact, the development of characters in Zola's novels usually plays out as a conflict of "nurture versus nature", still an unresolved dichotomy among sociologists today. Even the most fleetingly useful minor personage in Zola's novels is flesh-and-blood. The major characters in "The Fortune", the founding generation of the Rougon-Macquarts, are hateful, greedy, smug, callous opportunists, people of small souls and talents who grind through years of resentful mediocrity until an opportunity opens their path to fortune by trampling the hopes and the corpses of others. The opportunity is the coup d'état that replaced the Republic with the Empire of Louis Napoleon III, perhaps the first modern dictator. Zola's contempt for the victors in that upheaval flares like phosphorus in every sentence of "La Fortune." The essential message of the novel is that the crises of society often favor the least scrupulous scoundrels.

The novel is set in Plassans, a provincial bastion of class-bound conservatism in Provence. Class 'warfare' is one of the themes of Zola's work that seems prescient of more modern fiction. The town has three quarters - the shabby mansions of the moribund aristocracy, the old town of peasants and small merchants, and the new town of the up-and-coming professionals. Characters from each quarter cram their selfish interests into the narrative. Reading the novel as History, one can get quite a dynamic sense of social conflicts and change in mid-19th C France. Zola also excels at pure description. One can visualize Plassans as it was; in fact, it looks very much like one of the "plus belles villages" so relished by tourists of our times. Some readers may feel that Zola lavishes too many words on his descriptions of the settings of scenes, but I wouldn't agree. Good descriptive writing has a worth of its own.

There is a love story in "La Fortune des Rougon". The lovers are as childish as Romeo and Juliet, and just as apparently ill-fated. The boy is the idealistic Silvere, a grandson of Pierre Rougon for whom that monster of self-promotion cares not at all. The girl is truly a child, 13-year-old Miette, the abused daughter of a convict in the galleys. Their romance is the stuff of grand opera, a melodrama quite comparable to any of Verdi's or Puccini's. Once again, I suggest that the reader remember Zola's era; melodrama was high art in 1871. Their poignant love affair is something like a gilded frame around the sordid portrayal of the coup and the triumph of venality. The novel begins and ends with them, and the longest single episode is the pastoral depiction of their discovery of sexuality beyond mere childhood companionship. It's true that this depiction does not advance the central narrative of the novel. It's true that Zola may have loved his own flow of language too much ever to have edited his novel to modern satisfaction. But the romance of Miette and Silvere has a blushing, operatic charm that balances and sweetens the asperity of the novel as a whole. I wouldn't cut it too much.

If you've never read Zola at all, it's quite unlikely that you'll start with "The Fortune of the Rougons". It's not widely considered one of Zola's masterpieces, and it frankly isn't equal to Germinal, The Debacle, or the Human Beast. That's why I've rated it at only four stars, since the most I can award is five to such a masterpiece as "The Masterpiece", Zola's portrayal of the lives of painters and writers in the Paris of the Impressionists. All in all, nevertheless, "The Fortune of the Rougons" is the sort of novel that builds power as you read it, until you find yourself engrossed in its development and transported to its milieu.

Historic Treachery
The Fortune Of The Rougons has everything you expect from good French literature: intrigue, skull duggery, a complex maze of intertwining characters and all this against a vivid historical background.

The drama takes place in Plassans - a small, fictional province in rural France. It is a time of great political upheaval in which the followers of Napoleon Bonaparte are attempting to oust the Monarchist government, while in Plassans both the poor and the not so poor volley for position and power. This novel is the first in Zola's Rougon-Macquart Cycle, which comprises twenty volumes, so it is best to begin here if you want to experience the entire body of work in the manner Zola intended.

Rougon-Macquart:Read 'em in the Right Order!
Over and over, I keep seeing reviews of these novels that misidentify the order in which they're meant to be read.(For example, "HIS EXCELLENCY, the sixth novel of the series . . . .")

In his introduction to the 20th and final novel (DOCTOR PASCAL), Zola specified the order he intended the series to be read, and it differs greatly from the order in which the books were written.So, now that you're on the first of twenty, make a note of the LOGICAL order of the books, and you will enjoy them much more:

1)La Fortune des Rougon (tr. THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS); 2) Son Excellence Eugene Rougon (tr. HIS EXCELLENCY or CLORINDA); 3) La Curée (tr. THE KILL); 4) L'Argent (tr. MONEY); 5) La Rève (tr. THE DREAM); 6) La Conquête de Plassans (tr. THE CONQUEST OF PLASSANS or A PRIEST IN THE HOUSE); 7) Pot-Bouille (tr. POT LUCK, PIPING HOT!, RESTLESS HOUSE or LESSON IN LOVE); 8) Au Bonheur des Dames (tr. THE LADIES' PARADISE or THE LADIES' DELIGHT); 9) La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret (tr. ABBE MOURET'S TRANSGRESSION); 10) Une Page d'amour (tr. A LOVE EPISODE); 11) Le Ventre de Paris (tr. THE BELLY OF PARIS or THE FAT AND THE THIN); 12) La Joie de vivre (tr. THE JOY OF LIFE, HOW JOLLY LIFE IS! or ZEST FOR LIFE); 13) L'Assommoir; 14) L'Oeuvre (tr. THE MASTERPIECE or HIS MASTERPIECE); 15) La Bête Humaine (tr. THE BEAST WITHIN or THE HUMAN BEAST); 16) Germinal; 17) Nana; 18) La Terre (tr. THE EARTH or THE SOIL); 19) La Débâcle (tr. THE DOWNFALL); and, 20) Le Docteur Pascal (tr. DOCTOR PASCAL).

Beginning with LA FORTUNE, the books proceed more-or-less according to the family tree, from the Rougons to the Macquarts, and chronologically across the generations.Following LA FORTUNE, SON EXCELLENCE is about the Second Empire's tendency toward totalitarianism, as embodied in Eugene, the eldest son of Pierre Rougon.It makes sense to read it immediately following LA FORTUNE.If you read it as the sixth book, you will have first read about the second son's exploitative and decadent Parisian life.You will have also read a book that summarizes the entire first half of the series in its theme of haves and have-nots, and two books about the struggles between secularism and clergy in a provincial town, shown from different sides of the issue.Likewise, NANA will contain much that will elude you if you read it in the ninth position instead of the seventeenth, where it belongs.

This series of novels is a very rewarding reading experience, the type of endeavor like reading Proust that will stay with you your entire life.Eleven of these are in the public domain, available for download for whatever e-book reader you might have.(Google "free kindle books" and you'll find a wealth of free literature.) Those that aren't available in the Mondial editions are available in the Oxford World's Classics series.

And in case you were wondering, if this were a single novel, it would be 6,680 pages long.C'est pas possible!

Very Bad Publisher
There are two or three typos on each page of the book (no exaggeration), as well as frequent and very puzzling mistranslations. They will ruin your enjoyment of this terrific novel. Page after page of this spoils the fun. Sentences break in the middle of a paragraph and continue, indented, in the paragraph below. It's as though the typesetting was done by an intoxicated e. e. cummings, and the publisher decided to spare the expense of hiring a proofreader. Quite bizaar. I'd recommend you spend a sou or two more and choose another publisher. Bibliobazaar indeed.

Promising Beginning of an Epic Cycle
This is the first novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle which details every level of French society and a variety of characters and settings during the period of the Second Empire of Napoleon III (1852-1870).This book sets up the Rougon-Macquart family and introduces many characters who will become important throughout the cycle.Zola was an exponent of naturalism-he believed we could study people and their development through understanding their genetic background and watching as heredity would ultiamtely determine people's fate and character.This family, as is clearly shown, is marked by alcoholism and insanity plus an almost surreal level of greed, dishonesty and opportunism.This book is quite enjoyable as a case study of mankind at its most venal and repellent.Certainly his vision has its limits, we are not as completely determined by the mechanisms of biology as he might suggest (and he does even acknowledge this through the surprisingly decent/moral character of Doctor Pascal)and good is not always so completely smothered by evil.The book is very entertaining, clearly and simply written and a real page-turner.I'm looking forward to the rest of the cycle.This edition has some problems with the type face being less than appealing to the eye and because there are some smudges on the lower parts of the even-numbered pages. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

one of the most beautiful things i've ever read
I wonder that this isn't 10,000 times more popular than it is. I've only read it in English, but still -- it's amazing. It's like a depressive fairy tale (which isn't far from most fairy tales anyway), surreal and heady and intoxicating. It's the story of a preist who falls in love and is forever tortured by it; it's the story of the girl he is never able to fully love because he is always torn towards his idea of God. Here are some quotes that I noted for their particular beauty: So he left her at the end of the garden, sitting in the sunlight on the ground before a hive, whence the bees buzzed like golden berries round her neck, along her bare arms and in her hair, without thought of stinging her. * 'I should like to be a child once more. I should like to be always a child, walking in the shadow of your gown. When I was quite little, I clasped my hands when I uttered the name of Mary. My cradle was white, my body was white, my every thought was white. * And I will rise to your mouth like a subtle flame * He loved God with a love that lifted him out of himself, out of all else, and wrapped him round with a dazzling radiance of glory. He was like a torch that burns away with blazing light. And death seemed to him to be only a great impulse of love.
... Read more

Product Description
A love idyll between a poor embroideress and the son of a wealthy aristocratic family set against the background of a town in Northern France ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Unicorn of a Different Hue
I like this little novel, seemingly the most romantic and innocent of Emile Zola's immense Rougon-Macquart saga. I'd argue that it isn't what it seems, that in fact it's a subtle ironic denunciation of archaic religious values, however clothed in beauty and serenity they might appear in comparison to the corruption of France's Second Empire. I read the book in a French edition, but I looked over three of the available translations in the library, and decided that this one is the most promising.

Here's the review I wrote of the French edition:
Most readers in France and other Catholic-majority nations in the 19th C would have been acquainted with the Legenda Aurea, the "Golden Legend", the compendium of the lives of saints that had been universally popular since the Middle Ages. The Legends are rich in fantasy, like all fairy tales replete with both the gruesome and the delightful. La Reve (The Dream) is intentionally such a tale of implausible enchantment, a 'fairy tale' novella inserted into the often didactic naturalism of Emile Zola's 20-volume Rougon-Macquart chronicle of society during the Second Empire. The central character, Angelique, springs straight from the pages of the Golden Legend, which in fact she reads avidly and upon which she models the fantasies that control her behavior. Much of the imagery in La Reve, and even some of the odd archaic syntax, comes from hagiography. Zola always excels at description, at scene setting, and in this book he gives his descriptive powers free rein to visualize the cathedral and the cathedral community of Beaumont: the Gothic sculpture, the picturesque old houses and gardens, the heirloom furniture, the embroidered liturgical garments and the workshop where the adopted waif Angelique practices the delicate artisanry of embroidering the chasubles and stolls of her religion of spiritual splendor. Zola is completely in control of his style here, completely restrained from any urge to interpret or extrapolate; this is indeed a 'golden' dream of romance. And yet, somewhere toward the middle of this tale of enchanting innocence, one's heart begins to palpitate, one starts to perceive a looming tragedy, a bittersweet denouement, as if too much happiness cannot be other than a dream even in the enchanted precincts of a cathedral garden.

Angelique is an abandoned child, a runaway from an abusive foster home. She is found nearly frozen to death on the porch of the cathedral by the Huberts, a childless couple who take her in and eventually adopt her. The Huberts are the heirs of generations of artisanry in the making of liturgical garments and banners, which they teach the girl. Nothing could more vividly symbolize the antique simplicity and stability of pre-modern traditional culture than such an anonymous art. The girl grows from a wildly erratic, temperamental waif into a beautiful maiden, gifted at her art but completely sheltered from 'contemporary' reality. She lives in the Hubert's ancient dwelling, nestled between the buttresses of the cathedral, isolated even from the bustling commercial lower town of Beaumont. She dreams of a prince charming -- naturally, in the way of fairy tales, one WILL appear -- and of her own transcendence of her shameful birth as a princess of bliss. She also dreams of sainthood, of martyrdom, of the renunciation of worldly happiness achieved by her idolized Saint Agnes. Two such dreams must inevitably clash.

There's almost nothing explicit in this novel of Zola's comprehensive theories of heredity and its import in human character. If one happened to read La Reve alone, without any exposure to the rest of Zola's writings, without the context of the whole Rougon-Macquart saga, one might take it to be a quaint, melodramatic, almost operatic love story. But Angelique carries with her a secret that she herself doesn't know. At the time of her adoption, father Hubert goes to Paris to uncover the identity of her birth mother. What he learns is the only linkage of this novella with the other Rougon-Macquart books, and he never reveals his discovery to Angelique or even to his wife. The girl is the illegitimate daughter, given up at birth, of Sidonie Rougon, the daughter of the opportunistic scoundrel Pierre Rougon who founded the wealth of the Rougons. In other words, Angelique could have been a child of prosperity, in Paris, the niece of a powerful cabinet minister, rather than a humble village maiden. There is a huge irony implicit in this 'charming' love story, which only readers of the whole saga will perceive. The question of Angelique's hereditary nature isn't asked in so many words, but her capacity for emotional 'excess' MUST be, for Zola, part of her Rougon inheritance. Zola's subtle irony extends to his portrayal of the provincial values of the cathedral town of Beaumont, a fast-vanishing enclave of the 'ancien regime' of religious certainty. Those values are so pure, so sublime ... and for the lovers in this tale, so cruel and sterile. The generous integrity of traditional France, even if it survives in rural pockets, is "the dream" in the title of this book.

Probably the weakest of Zola, wonderful for anyone else .
In the light of the other Rougon-Macquart, LAssommoir, Germinal, La Bete Humaine and La Faute de lAbbe Mouret, among the twenty,this is pretty small potatoes.The heroine is light and insubstantial, almost by definition, and the story other-worldly.But this is Zola and his abilities shine through even this light canvas.The best characterizations are those of the adoptive parents,who in the end discover that they have gained forgiveness for their head-strongness in getting married over her mother's objections by adopting the saintly Angelique. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A minor masterpiece by a great writer
Doctor Pascal Rougon, a medical man at Plassans and a distinguished student of heredity, had brought up his niece Clotilde (daughter of Aristide Rougon alias Saccard) from childhood. Years afterwards they found that they passionately loved one another... His mother, Félicité Rougon, who feared that his researches on heredity might bring scandal on the family, burned all his papers, and in one hour destroyed the work of a lifetime... A child was born to Clotilde, a child which Pascal intensely desired, in the hope that through it might come the regeneration and rejuvenation of his race...

The story in the book is both simple and sad.

... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1897.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A Tough Haul
Eugene Rougon, the central character of this novel, is the eldest son of the scoundrel Pierre Rougon, the provincial founder of the 'legitimate' lineage of Rougons, most of them scoundrels, who appear either as main or as secondary characters in all twenty of the Rougon-Macquart novels. He was a scheming lawyer in Paris when we met him in the first novel of the series, "The Fortune of the Rougons". Now in "His Excellency" he is an important minister in the "Empire" of Louis Napoleon. He has an adversary worthy of his own rascality, however -- the beautiful and cold-hearted Clothilde -- and it's their struggle for dominance that shapes the story. Though "His Excellence" was written later than some other novels, in the chronology of the series it stands roughly second, and Zola declared at the end of his career that it should be read second.

This book was a "hard row to hoe" for me in French (I've set myself the goal of reading the whole Rougon Macquart series over a couple of years) because of the vast armature of legal and parliamentary terms needed to comprehend Zola's acrid disdain for the policies and postures of the Second Empire. Zola's scorn for the greed and self-indulgence of Louis Napoleon's minions is almost as fiery as mine for their counterparts in the corporate plutocracy of the USA today, with its Tea party dupes at the phony barricades, but it encumbers the human elements in the novel rather laboriously. In short, I enjoyed this reading much less than I have enjoyed any of the other Zolas I've read, either in French or in English. Certainly, if you are a newcomer to the works of Emile Zola, this would be a poor choice for a starting point. I've already posted reviews on several other books in the series under their English titles -- "The Fortune of the Rougons", "The Kill", "The Debacle" and "The Masterpiece" --any of which would be far more engaging and readable than "Son Excellence Eugene Rougon".

Read This After The Fortune of the Rougons
HIS EXCELLENCY may be the sixth of the series in order of composition, but Zola made it clear that it was meant to be read as the second of the series.(See my comments on the Mondial edition of FORTUNE for the preferred order.)

Just as THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS established Zola's style of backtracking and dovetailing events that occur within the same time frame, it can be seen as a model for the whole series.HIS EXCELLENCY proceeds in a straight chronological line, but in subsequent novels we will backtrack to this same period and cover it from different perspectives.

The most distinguished thing about HIS EXCELLENCY is the nuance with which Zola develops the antagonistic ambitions of Eugène Rougon and Clorinde.The first chapter very cleverly introduces Clorinde first, but builds up the later entrance of Rougon, establishing the ambiguity over who is the protagonist and who the antagonist.

With the exception of these two characters, the subsidiary characters are barely types, but if we fault Zola for this, then we have also to include Dickens and Balzac.It doesn't matter.It is a face-off between two strong characters, and that is enough.

The style of the novel is that of long set pieces in which the fickleness of Rougon's friends help shape his fall/rise/fall from fortune.We also get a brief glimpse into the court of Louis-Napoleon--but the real action is in the nepotism and favoritism that went on at lower levels in the Second Empire.

The Mondial editions sure have pretty covers--too bad they're full of typos.Worse, Vizitelly's translation frequently completely omits passages considered too racy for his Victorian readership.Some of his mistranslations are truly bonehead, to wit, the French word for "inevitably" is translated "as was fatal," making no sense whatever.Another glaring example is the translation of the French word for "perverse" as "perverted," with unintentionally hilarious meaning.

Be that as it may, this is the translation we have.Overall, Vizitelly has a good grasp of Zola's strengths and, liberties aside, he has rendered a very good novel into an acceptable translation.

Behind the scenes of Second Empire politics
This is the sixth novel in Zola's twenty-novel Rougon-Macquart cycle. Compared to the other novels in the series, this one falls in the middle of the pack in terms of quality. Eugene Rougon is a powerful minister in Napoleon III's government. Through his own vanity and ambition, and some political maneuvering on the part of his rivals, he is beginning to fall into disfavor with the Emperor and with the public. Rougon won't go down without a fight, however, and this book chronicles his battle to stay on top. At the same time, Rougon becomes romantically obsessed with a beautiful Italian aristocrat who has hidden political motivations of her own. This book offers a fascinating look into the complex inner workings of the government of France's Second Empire. Napoleon III himself is a supporting character in the book. This novel is similar to Zola's work Money (L'Argent) in that it offers us a very well-drawn, strong and ambitious central character with complicated emotional depth, situated in a position of power amidst the historical events of his era. To read this book it helps to have a general knowledge of French history and politics of the time, at least the various wars that were taking place during the Second Empire. The characters make reference to a lot of events, and it can be a difficult read if you don't know the facts behind the story. Those who enjoy Zola's other Rougon-Macquart novels will like this book, as will anyone interested in French history.

The complete guide to political intrigue
This book succeeds magnificently as a meticulous blow-by-blow account of a lowly provincial lawyer's rise to the highest level of political power, the people behind him, his fall from grace and his final triumphant return tohigh office. It shows the hollowness and shabbiness behind the glitteringfacade of state power and the motives that drive people to go into politics- in France at least. But as the main character has no other aim thansimply to wield authority over others and is perfectly willing tocontradict all his previous declarations of principle to retain thisauthority, the book tends to leave the reader in a depressed and cynicalstate, and this may be why its sales were among the lowest of Zola'sRougon-Macquart cycle. One might expect the main character, as the eldestson of the legitimate Rougon line, to have something more to offer, but thedryness of the subject chosen is too much for even Zola to overcome. Worthreading as a key part of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, but as a novel in itsown right ..... Zola has much better things to offer. ... Read more

Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Her Dream, France's Coma, Zola's Nightmare
Most readers in France and other Catholic-majority nations in the 19th C would have been acquainted with the Legenda Aurea, the "Golden Legend", the compendium of the lives of saints that had been universally popular since the Middle Ages. The Legends are rich in fantasy, like all fairy tales replete with both the gruesome and the delightful. La Reve (The Dream) is intentionally such a tale of implausible enchantment, a 'fairy tale' novella inserted into the often didactic naturalism of Emile Zola's 20-volume Rougon-Macquart chronicle of society during the Second Empire. The central character, Angelique, springs straight from the pages of the Golden Legend, which in fact she reads avidly and upon which she models the fantasies that control her behavior. Much of the imagery in La Reve, and even some of the odd archaic syntax, comes from hagiography. Zola always excels at description, at scene setting, and in this book he gives his descriptive powers free rein to visualize the cathedral and the cathedral community of Beaumont: the Gothic sculpture, the picturesque old houses and gardens, the heirloom furniture, the embroidered liturgical garments and the workshop where the adopted waif Angelique practices the delicate artisanry of embroidering the chasubles and stolls of her religion of spiritual splendor. Zola is completely in control of his style here, completely restrained from any urge to interpret or extrapolate; this is indeed a 'golden' dream of romance. And yet, somewhere toward the middle of this tale of enchanting innocence, one's heart begins to palpitate, one starts to perceive a looming tragedy, a bittersweet denouement, as if too much happiness cannot be other than a dream even in the enchanted precincts of a cathedral garden.

Angelique is an abandoned child, a runaway from an abusive foster home. She is found nearly frozen to death on the porch of the cathedral by the Huberts, a childless couple who take her in and eventually adopt her. The Huberts are the heirs of generations of artisanry in the making of liturgical garments and banners, which they teach the girl. Nothing could more vividly symbolize the antique simplicity and stability of pre-modern traditional culture than such an anonymous art. The girl grows from a wildly erratic, temperamental waif into a beautiful maiden, gifted at her art but completely sheltered from 'contemporary' reality. She lives in the Hubert's ancient dwelling, nestled between the buttresses of the cathedral, isolated even from the bustling commercial lower town of Beaumont. She dreams of a prince charming -- naturally, in the way of fairy tales, one WILL appear -- and of her own transcendence of her shameful birth as a princess of bliss. She also dreams of sainthood, of martyrdom, of the renunciation of worldly happiness achieved by her idolized Saint Agnes. Two such dreams must inevitably clash.

There's almost nothing explicit in this novel of Zola's comprehensive theories of heredity and its import in human character. If one happened to read La Reve alone, without any exposure to the rest of Zola's writings, without the context of the whole Rougon-Macquart saga, one might take it to be a quaint, melodramatic, almost operatic love story. But Angelique carries with her a secret that she herself doesn't know. At the time of her adoption, father Hubert goes to Paris to uncover the identity of her birth mother. What he learns is the only linkage of this novella with the other Rougon-Macquart books, and he never reveals his discovery to Angelique or even to his wife. The girl is the illegitimate daughter, given up at birth, of Sidonie Rougon, the daughter of the opportunistic scoundrel Pierre Rougon who founded the wealth of the Rougons. In other words, Angelique could have been a child of prosperity, in Paris, the niece of a powerful cabinet minister, rather than a humble village maiden. There is a huge irony implicit in this 'charming' love story, which only readers of the whole saga will perceive. The question of Angelique's hereditary nature isn't asked in so many words, but her capacity for emotional 'excess' MUST be, for Zola, part of her Rougon inheritance. Zola's subtle irony extends to his portrayal of the provincial values of the cathedral town of Beaumont, a fast-vanishing enclave of the 'ancien regime' of religious certainty. Those values are so pure, so sublime ... and for the lovers in this tale, so cruel and sterile. The generous integrity of traditional France, even if it survives in rural pockets, is "the dream" in the title of this book.

I read this short novel in French, and I'm not entirely sure that its beauties will be apparent in English translation, especially for sober anglophones who have never looked into the Legenda Aurea or the fables of Perrault. Several of the translations available are quite old and musty with Victorian/Edwardian conventions. Even if you read French, however, or if you find a plausible translation, I'd strongly suggest reading "The Fortune of the Rougons", the initial story of the Rougon-Macquart clan, before "The Dream", lest you be misled about its significance.

Naturalism with a touch of Romanticism.
Yes, The Dream does diverge a bit from the others inLes Rougon-Macquart series, but because of that, I really liked it.Less grit, more sweetness.I found it quite engaging.

Pure, idyllic grace
Written as a "passport to the Academy," this novel stands alone among the Rougon-Macquart series for its pure, idyllic grace. Angelique, a daughter of Sidonie Rougon (La Curee), had been deserted by her mother, and was adopted by a maker of ecclesiastical embroideries, who with his wife lived and worked under the shadow of an ancient cathedral. In this atmosphere the child grew to womanhood, and as she fashioned the rich embroideries of the sacred vestments she had a vision of love and happiness which was ultimately realized, though the realization proved too much for her frail strength...
The vast cathedral with its solemn ritual dominates the book and colours the lives of its characters. (J. G. Patterson)

Fractured fairy tale
Within Zola's body of work, this odd little book sticks out like a sore thumb. A stylistic departure from Zola's characteristic Naturalism, it reads almost like a fairy tale. Angelique, the illegitimate daughter of Sidonie Rougon, is adopted by a married couple in the town of Beaumont. Angelique learns the family trade, embroidering tapestries and vestments for the town's cathedral. She grows up in the shadow of this thirteenth-century cathedral, leading the cloistered life of an artisan. Reading becomes her favorite recreation, and romantic tales of saints and ancient royalty fascinate her. Within the centuries-old walls of the family home and the adjacent garden, Angelique leads a peaceful, content existent which imbues her with innocence and naiveté. Her passage from childhood to womanhood is irrelevant to her and goes largely unnoticed, until a young man enters her life and inspires in her dreams of a future life beyond the garden walls.
Angelique is such a likeable character that the reader really roots for her to succeed in achieving those dreams. One almost forgets how totally unbelievable the plot is. The book is a pleasant enough read, but utterly inconsequential. Upon finishing the book, one asks what's the point? It adds little to the Rougon-Macquart series as a whole. Zola's knack for descriptive thoroughness hits and misses in this book. His vivid depictions of the artisans' home, their lifestyle, their trade and craft captivate the reader. His long lists of saints and kings, on the other hand, inspire fatigue. Anyone who is reading the entire Rougon-Macquart series obviously should and will read this book. Casual fans of Zola's writing would probably do better to skip it.

MINOR NOT ONLY SIZE-WISE
"Le Reve/the Dream" is the shortest novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle; in fact, the second shortest is about 100 pages longer. In the sequence of novels it is preceded by "la Terre/the Earth" and followed by "la Bete Humain/the Beast in Man" - two very significant novels in the cycle. Therefore, one may think of "le Reve/the Dream" as some sort of respite. It is a story of tragic love of Angelique Rougon and the local bishop's son. The novel is well written, but is too imbued with religious theme and too one-dimensional to be ranked as high as other Zola's novels. It is important to point out that contacts between relatives, even though somewhat present in early Rougon-Macquart novels, are completely absent in later ones and "le Reve/the Dream" is a striking example of that. Early in the novel Angelique is adopted by a couple of church embroiderers. The husband in the family decides to find out something about Angelique's mother prior to taking care of official formalities related to adoption, but after learning that she (Sidonie Rougon from "la Cur(e')e/the Kill") does shady and precarious things to earn her living, he tells Angelique that her mother is dead. Therefore, Angelique never learned the truth about her family, which makes "le Reve/the Dream" one of the several novels in the cycle, which is only outwardly tied with the genealogical tree of the Rougon-Macquart family. ... Read more

Product Description
This final volume in Zola's twenty-book Rougon-Macquart cycle serves in many respects as an epilogue to the series -- but it's also a fine tale in its own right. Doctor Pascal, approaching old age, looks back on his life and finds himself asking whether he has made the right choices . . .and the answers he finds aren't always what you'd expect. Those who enjoy Zola's better-known novels will find much to appreciate here as well. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

What a way to end a long 20 book read!
A satisfying end to a literary journey I am so happy I undertook!This book could be read as a stand alone and be equally as fulfilling as well.Wow.Good stuff!

More than just an epilogue
This is the final book in Zola's twenty-novel Rougon-Macquart series. While it serves the purpose of an epilogue, it is also an impressive novel in its own right, and stands alone as a great work of literature. Pascal Rougon is a semi-retired physician who devotes most of his time to the study of evolution. An important asset in his research is the cabinet of files he keeps on his own diverse and dysfunctional family, the Rougons and Macquarts. Through detailed descriptions of these family dossiers, Zola reviews the events of the previous nineteen novels. In doing so, he provides us with a "Where are they now?" synopsis of the characters, and thoroughly explains the theories of heredity that underlie the series.
Evolutionary discourse only comprises a portion of the book, however, as most of the novel is devoted to the relationship between Pascal and his young niece Clotilde. In Pascal, Zola creates a very autobiographical character, and allows us glimpses into his private life. Zola fancied himself a scientist, and his novels his experiments. At the time Zola wrote this book he was falling in love with a young mistress of his own. Throughout the book, Pascal, approaching old age, looks back on his life and contemplates its purpose. Zola uses Pascal as a mouthpiece to ponder aloud philosophical issues, like the conflict between knowledge and faith. Can the two coexist, or must one vanquish the other in order for mankind to truly progress? He debates the definition of a life well-spent: Is it better to devote one's time on this earth to work, or to the enjoyment of simpler pleasures like love and family? While many men seek immortality through offspring, Pascal has spent his whole life striving for an intellectual legacy of scientific achievement. As he feels the end of his life drawing nearer, he, like Zola, wonders if he has made the right choice in life.
I would not put this work in the same class as Zola's four or five masterpieces, but it's in the better half of the Rougon-Macquart saga. Those who have enjoyed some of Zola's better-known novels will find much to enjoy in this one as well.

To Sum Things Up
Doctor Pascal's story is told here. The novel is more about him and his niece than about his musing on the heredity theory. All his scientific talks show no more than just one side of his personality, because showing that a certain physiological or a psychological anomaly passes either directly or indirectly from ascendants to descendants is a purely scientific task. A novel can show no proofs, only examples of such passing. Thus, Angelique Rougon in "Le Reve/The Dream", Pauline Quenu in "La Joie de Vivre/Zest for Life" and, in particular Jeanne Grandjean in "Une Page d'Amour/A Love Episode" clearly inherited a neurotic illness from their great-grand-mother Adelaide Fouque. And three members of the generation below (sons of Maxime Rougon, Nana and Claude Lantier) died in their childhood of various diseases, which shows complete family degeneracy. A more direct passing would be Gervaise Macquart's ("l'Assommoir/the Drum Shop")addiction to alcohol, which she inherited from her father Antoine, who died of a spontaneous ignition in a drunken stupor. However, there is no explanation either in any of the novels or in the genealogical tree how such phlegmatic and mercenary-minded people as Lisa Quenu and her husband ("Le Ventre de Paris/The Underbelly of Paris") produced such a joyous, generous and selfless daughter Pauline ("La Joie de Vivre/Zest for Life") or how Francois and Marthe Mouret, Adelaide Fouque's grandchildren, who die after losing their sanity ("La Conquete de Plassans/The Conquest of Plassans") and who produced a feeble-minded daughter and a neurotic son, whose disease developed into mysticism ("La faute de Abbe Mouret/The Sin of Father Mouret"), could along with that produce such an vigorous and business-minded son Octave ("Pot-Bouille/Pot Luck" and "Au Bonheur des Dames/"the Ladies' Paradise"). What makes it particularly hard to explain the genetic influence is the fact that family members (especially in late Rougon-Macquart novels) interact with each other little if any. Thus, three Lantier brothers seem totally alien to each other and their parents, Angelique Rougon "Le Reve/The Dream" is brought up under no influence of her mother Sidonie, Helene Grandjean ("Une Page d'Amour/A Love Episode") never has any contact with her brother Francois and Jean Macquart ("La Terre/The Earth" and "La Debacle/The Downfall") with his sisters Lisa and Gervaise. Furthermore, if to look at environment vs. heredity, things turn out to be in favor of the former, because there are characters who undergo a personality change. Thus, Octave Mouret in "Au Bonheur des Dames/The Ladies' Paradise" is a lot different from Octave in "Pot-Boille/Pot Luck", Arstide Saccard in "L'Argent/The Money" from Arstide in "La Curee/The Kill". Therefore, the heredity theory in Zola's novels is portrayed to a much lesser degree than the history of the French society under Napoleon III.

Science and reason defeated by pride and passion
What a plot line! After 30 years of scientific and genealogical research,a doctor in his late 50s decides his life is meaningless without children and accepts his 25-year old niece's offer to have his child. He dies of aheart attack, and his mother manages to destroy all his papers except hisfamily tree diagram. This, the last in the 20-book Rougon-Macquart cyclewas described by Zola himself as the summary and the conclusion of hiswork. Intellectually, it is highly adventurous in parts, even by today'sstandards, but it seems to fall flat at the end with its implication thatthe whole point of life is simply to breed and pass on your genes. Youcould say this book is the ultimate hymn to occupational therapy. Howeverlofty a view human beings may have of themselves and their activities, theyare really no different from any other form of life. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

New translation!
This is not a review, but news:
Oxford World Classics is set to release a new translation in November 2007, under the title "The Belly of Paris"
ISBN: 978-0-19-280633-8

One of the best of Zola's Rougon-Macquart books
This is a great book about the life around Les Halles in 19th century Paris. It looks like there is no other translation than this one by Ernest Vizetelly from over 100 years ago (correct me if I am wrong). Therefore, when another reviewer below writes "but there are several mistakes in translation" and "there is an entire section in which the translator removed a description of Zola's, because he thinks the English audience wouldn't be interested", then this is certainly correct, but as long as nobody translates this book again, we will have to live with this. And the reader should not forget that E. Vizetelly was Zola's "official" translator, his translations were the only ones authorized by Zola, they knew each other personally very well and helped each other during hard times, and some of the old-worldish British 19th century linguistic charme that Vizetelly used for this translation (and his other Rougon-Macquart translations) cannot be reproduced by any modern, 21st century translator. His Zola translations are classics, with all their faults!

Great Book with Bad Translation/Print
I am unsure if this book is available in English trans from someone other than Ed Vit. and Mondial book publishers, but there are several mistakes in translation that are more oversights and bad editing than any real translational problem between English/French. As well, there is an entire section in which the translator removed a description of Zola's, because he thinks the English audience wouldn't be interested. Incase he's reading this, I was interested. Zola is an excellent observer, that's part of the charm of his writing, his fabulous descriptions that allow the reader to nearly take part in an event for which they were not present, the descriptions are so detailed and interesting. To have instead an astrisk by Ed telling me at the bottom of the page that my sentiments couldn't take the brutal description...if there isn't a new translation, there needs to be one and a better edited version too!

That said, of course, even shoddy trans and editing mistakes can't ruin Zola. I am half way through and just like all others this novel immediately presents great characters that make you curious for more and keep you hooked until the end!!

Just Awesome!
Naturalism at its best.Zola never fails to ignite the senses with his amazingly gritty sense of prose.I can't get enough of him! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

Proofreader Was Absent That Day

The only reason I'm reading this book is that I'm committed to the whole series.I will survive!Beware of this edition - the typos and errors will drive you crazy.They should be embarrassed to print this and Amazon should be embarrassed to sell it!

Greatstudy of a neurosis and its social consequences
Chronolgically, A Love Episode (Une Page d'amour) is the 8th volume of the Rougon-Macquart series. There can be no doubt in the mind of the judicial critic that in the pages of "A Love Episode" the reader finds more of the poetical, more of the delicately artistic, more of the subtle emanation of creative and analytical genius, than in any other of Zola's works... In all literature there is nothing like the portrayal of the punishment of Helene Grandjean. Helene and little Jeanne are reversions of type. The old "neurosis," seen in earlier bran-ches of the family, reappears in these characters. Readers of the series will know where it began. Poor little Jeanne, most pathetic of creations, is a study in abnormal jealousy, a jealousy which seems to be clairvoyant, full of supernatural intuitions, turning everything to suspicion, a jealousy which blights and kills. Could the memory of those weeks of anguish fade from Helene's soul? This dying of a broken heart is not merely the figment of a poet's fancy. It has happened in real life. The coming of death, save in the case of the very aged, seems, nearly always, brutally cruel, at least to those friends who survive. (C. C. Starkweather)

A Transitional Novel
To those who have read George Sand it would seem that the plot of "Page d'Amour/Love Episode" is more akin to George Sand's and not Zola's novels (if to disregard a somewhat heavy-handed style of writing typical of Zola). George Sand's novels, however, usually have a happy ending. There are exceptions still; for example those who have read a lot of George Sand would recall that the ending of "Indiana" is somewhat bittersweet. The ending of"Page d'Amour/Love Episode" is also bittersweet in a sense that Helene Grandjean's daughter dies, but Helene marries the man who loves her.

The story is still too trite. Even historians say that Zola, who himself called this novel "syrupy", wrote it to quiet the critics, who accused him of scavenging dirty themes in "l'Assommoir/the Drum Shop".Lastly, it is important to note that after "Page d'Amour/Love Episode" Zola went on to "scavenge" another dirty theme in the novel "Nana".

The not-so-merry widow
A frantic young widow seeks a doctor during the night for her sick daughter and stumbles across her next-door neighbour. Returning to thank him, she is befriended by the doctor's wife. But gradually the doctor comesto love the widow for her calm and dignity and turns away from his societyhostess of a wife - with ultimately tragic consequences. A well-craftedstory with short chapters and leaning heavily on character portrayal forits effect. Very untypical Zola, the novel seems to be written as abreathing space between "L'Assommoir" and "Nana" tocash in on Zola's new-found fame, avoid being typecast as a muck-racker andto show that even respectable, well-off people living in a prosperousneighbourhood and minding their own business can be waylaid and thrown intoturmoil by love's passion. The story also ties up a loose end in a minorbranch of the Rougon-Macquart dynasty, though the heroine ultimatelyreceives less drastic treatment from the author than her two brothers. Theimpression from this book is more that of the "stiff upper lip"than the "blood and guts" you normally expect from Zola and it isprobably the best of this type in the 20-novel cycle. ... Read more

Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Product Description
This Halcyon Classics ebook contains thirteen novels and five short stories by French author Émile Zola (1840-1902).Zola was a member of the naturalist school and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism.Zola is also well known as the activist who was instrumental in the exoneration of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish army officer wrongly convicted of treason.

This ebook is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.


Novels

Therese Raquin
The Fat and the Thin
L’Assommoir
A Love Episode
Germinal
His Masterpiece
The Dream
The Downfall
Dr. Pascal
The Fortune of the Rougons
The Three Cities
Fruitfulness
The Fete at Coqueville

Short Stories

Nana
The Miller's Daughter
Captain Burle
The Death of Olivier Bacaille
The Flood
... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Product Description

This collection was designed for optimal navigation on Kindle and other electronic devices. It is indexed alphabetically and chronologically making it easier to access individual books and stories. This collection offers lower price, the convenience of a one-time download, and it reduces the clutter in your digital library. All books included in this collection feature a hyperlinked table of contents and footnotes. The collection is complimented by an author biography. Author's biography and stories in the trial version.

Customer Reviews (2)

Good collection
I am very pleased to be able to read a lot of stories byZola which can't be found in bookstores. A good collection! A mix of his well known works with lesser known.

Works of Emile Zola
Complete Works of Emile Zola (20+ Works) FREE Author's biography and stories in the trial version.

Another first-class e-book from MobileReference. It looks and works great on my Kindle. Will buy from you again. Many thanks! ... Read more