Léon Hennique Novel
Complete Novel 'A Character' & Rare French Literary Translations
Category: Octave Mirbeau – Les Écrivains
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First English translation of Octave Mirbeau’s powerful 1885 tribute to Victor Hugo, originally published in La France. This previously untranslated essay brilliantly links Hugo to Napoleon and explores his revolutionary impact on French literature. Crowned with glory, sated with days, lulled by the universal murmur of reverence and mourning, Victor Hugo has departed. Yet his…
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Octave Mirbeau defends Émile Zola with biting wit in this first-ever English translation of his 1880s essay on the Germinal censorship controversy. The row that broke out between M. Émile Zola, the Censorship, and the ministry has now blown over. Little by little it’s fizzling out into the gossipy tittle-tattle of hack journalism. They have…
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Octave Mirbeau’s sharp 1885 critique examining Guy de Maupassant’s dominance in French short story writing, while defending other overlooked masters of the genre. A witty analysis of literary fame and the perils of excessive praise in 19th century French literature. Literary production grows more enormous, more menacing by the day. Books rise, overflow, spread everywhere:…
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Octave Mirbeau’s scathing 1887 essay on literary posterity and false reputations. A devastating critique of Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, and Saint-Victor, while championing Flaubert’s enduring genius. Mirbeau exposes how time strips away hollow fame from celebrated mediocrities. She is already arriving for men we knew, men we loved, who seem to have died only yesterday, so thoroughly…
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Octave Mirbeau’s scathing 1886 essay demolishing critics who championed Alexandre Dumas’s adventure novels over Tolstoy and the realists. A masterpiece of literary satire from the Belle Époque, translated into English for the first time. In these enlightened times, some truly extraordinary things are being written. I’m talking, of course, about what appears in our solemn,…
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Octave Mirbeau’s moving obituary for Émile Hennequin (1888), the brilliant young critic who revolutionised literary criticism with his scientific method. A tribute to a pioneering intellect who died tragically at 29, leaving behind groundbreaking work on Hugo, Wagner, Poe and others. It is with profound anguish that I write this name at the head of…
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Octave Mirbeau’s biting 1888 satire ‘Tomorrow’s Gaiety’ savagely mocks Captain Driant’s militaristic novel through dark irony, lamenting the death of French wit while pretending to celebrate a book that finds joy in warfare and destruction. He shows us in no less captivating fashion the destructive effects of the Lebel rifle and torpedoes. —Chincholle For ages…
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A sharp, ironic essay by Octave Mirbeau defending philosopher Elme-Marie Caro against Parisian gossip. Through the lens of Caro’s modest country house in Les Damps, Mirbeau exposes the malicious myths spread by society journalists about this simple, kind-hearted thinker. “Never assume that when a crowd chases a man, pelting him with stones, he must be…
Léon Hennique Novel 