French Short Stories The Last Lesson And 16 Others

Alphonse Daudet , François Edouard Joachim Coppé , Honoré de Balzac , Prosper Mérimée , Abraham Catulle Mendès , Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant , Eugène-François Vidocq , Alexandre Dumas , René François Nicolas Marie Bazin , Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola 지음 | Jean-François Raffaëlli 그림

포레스트 위즈덤 2025년 07월 30일 출간

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The anthology features works by various acclaimed authors, each offering a unique insight into French culture and society through their storytelling. The tales range from poignant reflections on love, loss, and social commentary, showcasing characters from all walks of life, including soldiers, aristocrats, and outcasts.
"The Last Lesson" Set against the backdrop of the Franco-Prussian War, the narrative revolves around a young boy's final day at school before the German occupation. Daudet's moving portrayal of the teacher's last lesson and the boy's emotional response highlights themes of patriotism, sacrifice, and the personal impact of historical events.

목차

A PIECE OF BREAD By Francois Coppée
THE LAST LESSON By Alphonse Daudet
THE ELIXIR OF LIFE By Honore De Balzac
MATEO FALCONE By Prosper Merimee
THE MIRROR By Catulle Mendes
A FOREST BETROTHAL By Erckmann-Chatrian
ABANDONED By Guy De Maupassant
JEAN MONETTE By Eugene Francois Vidocq
SOLANGE—DR. LEDRU’S STORY OF THE REIGN OF TERROR By Alexandre Dumas
THE BIRDS IN THE LETTER-BOX By Rene Bazin
JEAN GOURDON’S FOUR DAYS By Émile Zola
BARON DE TRENCK By Clemence Robert
THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA By Henry Murger
THE WOMAN AND THE CAT By Marcel Prevost
A FIGHT WITH A CANNON By Victor Hugo
CROISILLES By Alfred De Musset
THE VASE OF CLAY By Jean Aicard

인물정보

저자(글) Alphonse Daudet

Alphonse Daudet (1840~1897) was a French novelist.<br />Daudet was born in Nîmes, France. His family, on both sides, belonged to the bourgeoisie. His father, Vincent Daudet, was a silk manufacturer—a man dogged through life by misfortune and failure. Alphonse, amid much truancy, had a depressing boyhood. In 1856 he left Lyon, where his schooldays had been mainly spent, and began his career as a schoolteacher at Alès, Gard, in the south of France. The position proved to be intolerable and Daudet said later that for months after leaving Alès he would wake with horror, thinking he was still among his unruly pupils. These experiences and others were reflected in his novel Le Petit Chose.<br />On 1 November 1857, he abandoned teaching and took refuge with his brother Ernest Daudet, three years his senior, who was trying, "and thereto soberly", to make a living as a journalist in Paris. Alphonse took to writing, and his poems were collected into a small volume, Les Amoureuses (1858), which met with a fair reception. He obtained employment on Le Figaro, then under Cartier de Villemessant's energetic editorship, wrote two or three plays, and began to be recognized in literary communities as possessing distinction and promise. Morny, Napoleon III's all-powerful minister, appointed him to be one of his secretaries—a post which he held till Morny's death in 1865.<br />In 1866, Daudet's Lettres de mon moulin (Letters from My Windmill), written in Clamart, near Paris, and alluding to a windmill in Fontvieille, Provence,(citation needed) won the attention of many readers.

저자(글) François Edouard Joachim Coppé

François Edouard Joachim Coppée (1842 ~1908) was a French poet and novelist.<br />Coppée was born in Paris to a civil servant. After attending the Lycée Saint-Louis he became a clerk in the ministry of war and won public favour as a poet of the Parnassian school. His first printed verses date from 1864. In 1869, his "Poème modernes" (among others La Grève de forgerons) were quite successful. In the same year, Coppée's first play, Le Passant, starring Sarah Bernhardt and Madame Agar, was received with approval at the Odéon theatre, and later Fais ce que dois (1871) and Les Bijoux de la délivrance (1872), short poetic dramas inspired by the Franco-Prussian War, were applauded.<br />

저자(글) Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (1799~1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.<br />An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed in a law office, but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.<br />Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly owing to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Hańska (née Contessa Rzewuska), a Polish aristocrat and his longtime love. He died in Paris six months later.

저자(글) Prosper Mérimée

Prosper Mérimée (1803~ 1870) was a French writer in the movement of Romanticism, one of the pioneers of the novella, a short novel or long short story. He was also a noted archaeologist and historian, an important figure in the history of architectural preservation. He is best known for his novella Carmen, which became the basis of Bizet's opera Carmen. He learned Russian, a language for which he had great affection, before translating the work of several notable Russian writers, including Pushkin and Gogol, into French. From 1830 until 1860 he was the inspector of French historical monuments, responsible for the protection of many historic sites, including the medieval citadel of Carcassonne and the restoration of the façade of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. Along with the writer George Sand, he discovered the series of tapestries called The Lady and the Unicorn, arranging for their preservation. He was instrumental in the creation of Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris, where the tapestries now are displayed.

저자(글) Abraham Catulle Mendès

Abraham Catulle Mendès (1841~1909) was a French poet and man of letters. He was associated with the Parnassianist school.<br />Of Portuguese Jewish extraction, Mendès was born in Bordeaux. After childhood and adolescence in Toulouse, he arrived in Paris in 1859 and quickly became one of the protégés of the poet Théophile Gautier. He promptly attained notoriety with the publication in the La Revue fantaisiste (1861) of his Roman d'une nuit, for which he was condemned to a month's imprisonment and a fine of 500 francs. He was allied with Parnassianism from the beginning of the movement and displayed extraordinary metrical skill in his first volume of poems, Philoméla (1863). His critics have noted that the elegant verse of his later volumes is distinguished rather by dexterous imitation of different writers than by any marked originality.

저자(글) Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (1850~1893) was a 19th-century French author, celebrated as a master of the short story, as well as a representative of the naturalist school, depicting human lives, destinies and social forces in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms.<br />Maupassant was a protégé of Gustave Flaubert and his stories are characterized by economy of style and efficient, seemingly effortless dénouements. Many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, describing the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught up in events beyond their control, are permanently changed by their experiences. He wrote 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse. His first published story, "Boule de Suif" ("The Dumpling", 1880), is often considered his most famous work.

저자(글) Eugène-François Vidocq

Eugène-François Vidocq (1775~ 1857) was a French criminal turned criminalist, whose life story inspired several writers, including Victor Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe, and Honoré de Balzac. He was the founder and first director of France's first criminal investigative agency, the Sûreté Nationale, as well as the head of the first known private detective agency. Vidocq is considered to be the father of the French national police force. He is also regarded as the first private detective.

저자(글) Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas (1802~1870) also known as Alexandre Dumas père, was a French novelist and playwright.<br />His works have been translated into many languages and he is one of the most widely read French authors. Many of his historical novels of adventure were originally published as serials, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. Since the early 20th century, his novels have been adapted into nearly 200 films. Prolific in several genres, Dumas began his career by writing plays, which were successfully produced from the first. He wrote numerous magazine articles and travel books; his published works totalled 100,000 pages. In the 1840s, Dumas founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris.<br />His father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) to Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, and Marie-Cessette Dumas, an African slave. At age 14, Thomas-Alexandre was taken by his father to France, where he was educated in a military academy and entered the military for what became an illustrious career.<br />Alexandre acquired work with Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, then as a writer, a career that led to his early success. Decades later, after the election of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in 1851, Dumas fell from favour and left France for Belgium, where he stayed for several years. He moved to Russia for a few years and then to Italy. In 1861, he founded and published the newspaper L'Indépendent, which supported Italian unification. He returned to Paris in 1864.<br />English playwright Watts Phillips, who knew Dumas in his later life, described him as "the most generous, large-hearted being in the world. He also was the most delightfully amusing and egotistical creature on the face of the earth. His tongue was like a windmill – once set in motion, you would never know when he would stop, especially if the theme was himself."

저자(글) René François Nicolas Marie Bazin

Born at Angers, he studied law in Paris, and on his return to Angers became Professor of Law in the Catholic university. In 1876, Bazin married Aline Bricard. The couple had two sons and six daughters. He contributed to Parisian journals a series of sketches of provincial life and descriptions of travel, and wrote Stephanette (1884), but he made his reputation with Une Tache d'Encre (A Spot of Ink) (1888), which received a prize from the Academy. He was admitted to the Académie française on 28 April 1904, to replace Ernest Legouvé.<br />René Bazin was a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, and was President of the Corporation des Publicistes Chretiens.

저자(글) Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola

Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (1840~1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in his renowned newspaper opinion headlined J'Accuse...!  Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prizes in Literature in 1901 and 1902.

그림/만화 Jean-François Raffaëlli