A wry, observant masterpiece—one of the singular treasures of the French fin de siècleWritten between the age of twenty-three and his death at age forty-six, Jules Renard's Journal 1887–1910 is a triumph of introspection and wit. One of the most celebrated figures of Belle Époque Paris, Renard was also a prolific diarist whose private musings were first published in five volumes some fifteen years after his death. Acclaimed by everyone from Somerset Maugham...

Celebrating the 80th anniversary of one of the most famous stories in the world, a beautiful Puffin paperback edition translated from the original French by Theo Cuffe.This is the enchanting story of the little prince who lives on a tiny planet with three volcanoes and a haughty flower, which he must protect from the baobabs, the bad seeds. The rulers of the other planets he visits all suffer from the cares and stupidities of the everyday world. Only the little prince, through his ...

"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this "optimism" concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the "all for the best" approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters, not to mention the questions of illness and man-made war. Moreover, as the rebel whose satiric genius had earned him not only international acclaim, but two stays in the Bastille, flogging, and exi...

Joris-Karl Huysmans's cult classic of deviance and decadence that inspired Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, now in a new translation by Theo CuffeA celebration of deviance, vanity, sensual abandon, and the aesthetics of artifice, Against Nature brings us the nineteenth-century rebel Jean Des Esseintes—disaffected, degenerate, and art obsessed. The last of a proud and noble family, Des Esseintes retreats from the world in disgust at bourgeois ...

The cult novel of fin de siècle decadence that inspired Oscar Wilde'It will be biggest fiasco of the year - but I don't give a damn! It will be something nobody has ever done before.'The title page of the first complete English translation of Against Nature (published in the French as À Rebours) included the caption 'the book that Dorian Gray loved and inspired Oscar Wilde.' It was, declared Wilde, one of the best novels he had e...

Brought to you by Penguin.This Penguin Classic is performed by Ben Lloyd-Hughes, best known for Divergent, Me Before You and The Inbetweeners. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Michael Wood.Brought up in the household of a powerful Baron, Candide is an open-minded young man, whose tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief that 'all is for the best'. But when his love for the Baron's rosy-cheeked daughter is discovered, Candide is ...

Brought to you by Puffin.The timeless, enchanting story of the little prince who lives on a tiny planet with three volcanoes and a haughty flower, which he must protect from the baobabs, the bad seeds. The rulers of the other planets he visits all suffer from the cares and stupidities of the everyday world. Only the little prince, through his clear, loving eyes, knows that the simplest of things can be of the utmost importance.Translated by T. V. F. Cuffe.