Here's a list I compiled for the CHS class last month, of a ton of 19th Century French books for possible further reading. Students chose one book to read and write a critical analysis on (they're doing that now). I post it here just in case anybody's looking for further reading (as if there's not enough material in the Reader already, right? There are all available in English in some form, but some are harder to get hold of than others.
LITERATURE
Early
Romanticism (1800-1830)
René de
Chateaubriand:
Atala
(novel)
The Genius
of Christianity (social theory)
Alphonse
Lamartine, Poetic Meditations (poetry)
Mme. De
Staël, On Germany (criticism)
Stendhal,
Racine and Shakespeare (criticism)
Popular
Romanticism (1825-1880)
Jean-Pierre
Béranger, 100 Poems of Béranger (political poetry)
Auguste
Barbier, Two Gifts (poems?)
Hector
Berlioz, Evenings with the Orchestra (essays and stories on music)
Alexandre
Dumas & Auguste Maquet:
The Three
Musketeers (adventure novel)
The Man in
the Iron Mask (historical fiction)
The Count of
Monte Cristo (historical adventure)
Victor
Hugo:
Selected
Poems of Victor Hugo
Notre-Dame
of Paris (Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Les
Miserables
Things Seen
(essays from newspapers)
Napoleon the
Little (political poetry)
Alfred de
Musset, Selected Works (poetry, comedic plays)
Charles
Sainte-Beuve, Literary Criticism
George Sand:
Indiana
(novel)
Leone Leoni
(novel)
Mauprat
(adventure novel)
Black City
(socialist feminist novel)
Laura: A
Journey Into the Crystal (fantasy novel)
The Naiad
(ghost story)
Eugene Sue:
The
Wandering Jew (Gothic-Conspiracy Melodrama)
The
Mysteries of Paris (Crime Thriller/Mystery)
Romanticist
Theater (1827-1850)
Alexandre
Dumas:
The Three
Musketeers (play version)
The Princess
of Baghdad
Arséne
Houssaye, Man About Paris (Memoirs of theatre director)
Victor Hugo:
Cromwell
Hernani
The King’s
Diversion
Ruy Blas
Alfred de
Vigny, Chatterton
Orientalist
Romanticism (1820-1870)
Gustave
Flaubert:
The
Temptation of Saint Anthony (novel)
Salambo
(novel)
Théophile
Gautier, Romance of a Mummy (historical fiction)
Literary
Travel Diaries by Gautier and Nerval
Gothic
Horror / Frenetic Romanticism
Jules Barbey
d’Aurevilly, Les Diaboliques (aristocratic horror)
Victor Hugo:
Han of
Iceland (novel)
Bug-Jargal
(novel)
Théophile
Gautier:
Albertus:
or, the Soul in Sin (gothic poem)
The Comedy
of Death (gothic poem)
Lautréamont
/ Isadore Ducasse:
Maldoror
(avant-garde horror-prose poem-novel)
Poesies
(poem/treatise of plaigerized quotations)
Jules Janin,
The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman
Charles
Nodier:
Smarra &
Trilby (gothic novels)
The Vampyre
(play adaptation of English gothic novel)
Avant-Garde
Romanticism, Jeunes-France / Bouzingo (1830-1840)
Théophile
Gautier:
Three
Chapters from The Jeunes-France (short stories on the avant-garde)
Gérard de
Nerval:
Selected
Writings (poems, prose poems, novels)
Sylvie
(pastoral novel)
Emilie
(military historical novel)
Aurelia
(mystical novel on madness)
Realism
(1830-1900)
Honoré de
Balzac, The Human Comedy (cycle of novels)
Gustave
Flaubert:
Madame
Bovary (novel)
A
Sentimental Education (novel)
Stendhal:
The Red and
the Black (novel)
The
Charterhouse of Parma (novel)
Memoirs of
Egoism (published diary)
Parnassians
and “The Damned Poets” (1840-1880)
Charles
Baudelaire:
Flowers of
Evil (dark lyric poetry)
Paris Spleen
(prose-poetry)
Artificial
Paradises (essays on art, literature & altered states)
Selected
Writings on Art and Literature (criticism & theory)
Selected
Letters
Intimate
Journals
Théophile
Gautier:
Mlle. De
Maupin (novel on gender)
Spirite
(love story about a ghost)
Enamels and
Cameos (poetry)
French
Poetry Since 1830 (criticism)
Arthur
Rimbaud:
Illuminations
(prose poems)
A Season in
Hell (poetry)
Paul
Verlaine, Selected Poems
Genre
Fiction (1850- )
Alexandre
Dumas, Celebrated Crimes (true crime)
Maurice
Leblanc, Arsene Lupin (mystery series)
Jules Verne:
20,000
Leagues under the Sea (Science Fiction)
Around the
World in 80 Days (Adventure)
Journey to
the Center of the Earth (Science Fiction)
Paris
in the 20th
Century (Dystopian Science Fiction)
Naturalism
(1860-1900)
Colette (Many
books in translation, on women in various social roles)
Guy de
Maupassant, Short Stories (mostly military fiction)
Emile Zola,
Germinal & other novels
Decadence
and Symbolism (1880-1910)
Alphonse
Allais, World of Alphonse Allais (avant-garde comic poetry)
Charles Cros,
The Supreme Progress (science fiction stories)
Eduard
Dujardin, We’ll To the Woods No More (first stream-of-consciousness
novel)
Felix Fénéon,
Novels in Three Lines (poems arranged from newspaper clippings)
Adoré
Floupette, Deliquescences (poems satirizing Decadent movement)
Remy de
Gourmont:
Selected
Writings (philosophy, theory, and criticism)
ed., The
Book of Masks (anthology of stories & poems by many Decadent
writers)
Joris-Karl
Huysmans:
Against
Nature/Against the Grain (novel & criticism)
La-Bas
(novel on avant-garde satanism)
Alfred Jarry:
Dr.
Faustroll, Pataphysician (comic-philosophical novel)
Ubu Roi
(absurdist play)
Days and
Nights (novel)
Black
Minutes of Memorial Sand (poetry)
Marcel
Schwob, The Children’s Crusade (prose-poem cycle)
Maurice
Maeterlink (Belgian playwright)
Stéphane
Mallarmé:
Collected
Poems
Divigations
(literary theory and philosophy)
Collected
Letters
Octave
Mirbeau, The Torture Garden (horror stories)
Rachilde,
Monsieur Venus (novel on gender-play)
Georges
Rodenbach, Bruges la Morte (novel)
Saint-Pol-Roux,
Pauses in the Procession (prose poems)
Paul Valéry:
The Art of
Poetry (literary theory and philosophy)
Monsieur
Teste (novel)
Villiers de
l’Isle-Adam:
The Future
Eve (avant-garde science fiction)
Cruel Tales
(satirical prose poems)
NONFICTION
Philosophy,
Social and Political Theory (1800-1900)
Henri Bergson
(very dense philosophy):
Matter and
Memory
Time and
Simultaneity
Time and
Free Will
Pierre
Brisset, The True Philosophy (avant-garde anthropology)
Charles
Fourier, Theory of the Four movements (utopian theory, sometimes
absurd)
Claire Moses
and Leslie Rabine, ed., Feminism, Socialism, and French Romanticism
(translations and history)
Madame de
Staël, Politics, Literature, and National Character (social and
literary theory)
Alexis de
Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Flora Tristan:
The Worker’s
Union
Peregrinations
of a Pariah (autobiography of feminist labor organiser)
History and
Historiography (1820-1880)
Jules
Claretie, Camille Desmoulins, Lucille Desmoulins (biography of
Dantonist journalists)
Théophile
Gautier, A History of Romanticism (Eyewitness account of Romanticist
avant-garde)
François
Guizot, History and Origin of Representative Government in Europe
Paul Lacroix
(Bibliophile Jacob), France in the Middle Ages (Romanticist history
of Medieval life)
Prosper
Olivier Lissagaray, History of the Revolution of 1871 (history of the
Commune by a participant)
Claude-François
Meneval, Working with Napoleon (memoirs of Napoleon’s secretary)
Henri Murger,
Bohemians of the Latin Quarter (short stories on Bohemian subculture)
Napoleon
Bonaparte, Napoleon on Napoleon (autobiography)
Some poets and
short story writers have never had an entire book published in
English, but some work can be found in various anthologies and
online. If you’re interested in one or more of these people, let us
know and we might be able to help you find enough of their work to
write about.
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