For a hundred years and more after the Revolution, millions of peasants lived on as if in a timeless world, their existence little different from that of the generations before them.The author of this lively, often witty, and always provocative work traces how France underwent a veritable crisis of civilization in the early years of the French Republic as traditional attitudes and practices crumbled under the forces of modernization. Local roads and railways were the decisive factors, bringing hitherto remote and inaccessible regions into easy contact with markets and major centers of the modern world. The products of industry rendered many peasant skills useless, and the expanding school system taught not only the language of the dominant culture but its values as well, among them patriotism. By 1914, France had finally become La Patrie in fact as it had so long been in name.

    Maurice Beebe calls it "a distinguished contribution to modern literary history." Jane Marcus hails it as "the first serious literary history of the period and its women writers, making along the way no small contribution to our understanding of the relationships between women artists and their male counterparts, from Henry James to Hemingway, Joyce, Picasso, and Pound."

    As a young woman, Madeleine got her training by working in a family restaurant in Touraine and in the kitchens of France'¬?s most respected regional cooks, who nourished her appetite for the tradition, rigor, and personal nature of cooking. Her exuberant and colorful memoir of that time-originally published over 25 years ago-tells of collecting mussels at the shore, churning butter from the milk of village cows, gathering mushrooms in nearby woods, and then transforming them into glorious food under the tutelage of her informal mentors. Over 250 recipes for the simple dishes she learned at their sides illustrate her evocative reminiscences of a bygone era in rural France. Part travelogue, part social history, part instruction manual, this classic is required reading for anyone who wants to know more about the life, times, and tastes of a woman who has helped shape American cooking.

    This collection spans fifty years of Char's career, and represents the full range of his poetic voice.Translated from the French and annotated by Mary Ann Caws and Jonathan Griffin.

    Christmas mysteries abound: an otherwise sensible little girl insists that she has seen Father Christmas, a statement alarming to her neighbors, Monsieur and Madame Maigret. Then, a choirboy helps the inspector solve a crime while he lies in bed with a cold; another boy, pursued by a criminal, ingeniously leaves a trail to help Maigret track him. Many of these stories feature observant and resourceful children, frightened yet resolute, who bring out a paternal streak in the childless Maigret. The rapport between the inspector and these youthful heroes imparts a delightful freshness to this holiday collection-a cornucopia for fans of Maigret and mysteries.

    

    

    The theater also provides the backdrop for the more frankly autobiographical Music-Hall Sidelights, a sequence of short sketches of Colette's life on tour with her manager, Georges Wague. The subject is again a woman's education, but this time it is the exacting crafts of writer and theatrical performer that are being learned.

    The mystery that surrounds her characters - Anne Marie Stretter, the Vice-Consul, the beggar woman of Savannahket, Lol V. Stein - is not dispelled, but as they appear and reappear in book, script, and film, we began to understand their strange seduction.With 'India Song' (her shooting script and working notes are included in this book), Marguerite Duras broke new ground. Critical essays and appreciations by renowned French thinkers explore the ways this and her other works have generated new possibilities in writing and image-making at a critical juncture in Western representation.

    Stationed in the trenches of Champagne, this man of letters who had been at the forefront of the surrealist movement was transformed overnight into an artilleryman. The fascinating correspondence bears witness to the typical yet deeply idiosyncratic experience of Apollinaire at an especially crucial moment of his existence as man and artist. Apollinaire shares with Madeleine his thoughts on art and literature from Racine to Tolstoy, and at the same time he uniquely documents the daily life of a soldier at the front during the Great War. As well, the letters reveal intimate and little-known aspects of Apollinaire’s personality—from his childhood and tastes to his grandest aesthetic ideas.Writing about the letters in his biography of Apollinaire, Francis Steegmuller noted, “Nowhere, is there a more ‘living picture’ of a poet in a war . . . or, outside of Stendhal, a more vivid picture of war itself.” Letters to Madeleine is a moving portrait of a poet facing one of humanity’s starkest realities, and it will be of interest to not only fans of Apollinaire but those interested in personal accounts of World War I as well.

    

    A moving account of how ordinary men and women faced the loss of their beloved country to Nazi invaders.

    16 stories:The diary of a madman.--A vendetta.--Two friends.--The devil.--Saint-Antoine.--Coco.--The madwoman.--Mohammed-Fripouille.--A midnight feast.--Old Milon.--The hair.--Mother Savage.--The blind man.--Mademoiselle Cocotte.--At sea.--The case of Louise Roque.

    Naturally light and lean, the recipes use the freshest of ingredients, enhanced by a striking blend of flavors and seasonings. More than two hundred regional classics -- from chickpea and sage soup, a hearty country pate, or an authentic salade nicoise, to an inviting variety of meat, seafood, and vegetable dishes -- are authentically transported to the modern American kitchen. Mireille Johnston's local lore brings the rich vegetation, the colors, scents, and sensations of her native Provence to the beginning cook and the experienced chef alike.

    Not an easy task, you might think, and in translating Alphonse Allais into English, Miles Kington set himself a similar challenge. He carried it off with panache. As Max Harrison said in The Times, '... has done a difficult job well, even preserving some of Allais's puns'. Alphonse Allais has been described as the greatest humorous writer ever. In the words of Lisa Appignanesi, 'Allais was a consummate absurdist. From an ordinary phenomenon, simple sentiment or situation, he would logically deduce the looniest, most macabre and most unexpected result ... His humour kept all Paris, high and low, waiting breathlessly for the paper which would carry his next tale ...' On first publication, in 1976, Clive James in the Observer said 'Allais has been dead 70 years but his mocking tone ensures him a permanently relevant after-life'. And John Sturrock in the New Statesman, 'Allais stands, along with Jarry, at the head of the most dazzling and highly educated tradition of French humour, as witty as it is whimsical'. Faber Finds offers this rare book as a tribute not only to Alphonse Allais but also Miles Kington, two great humorists in tandem.

    Besides a rich artistic and historical past, the region boasts great natural beauty and offers visitors the gastronomic delights of local cuisine and wines.

    French opera of this time was like the Eiffel Tower, a spectacle of gaiety and epic passions, and, like the Tower, the posters reprinted in this book are theatre pieces of surprising charm. Rare opera souvenirs, most of which advertise premiere performances, these posters also illustrate the full flowering of the illustrated poster which, at mid-nineteenth century, was virtually a new graphic art.This collection concentrates on the French poster (and opera) of the Belle Epoque, while also dipping back to include rare early examples of the illustrated poster and forward to some remarkable pieces of French Art Deco design. Included are posters by Jules Chéret (the acknowledged father of the modern poster), Steinlen, Grasset, and over 30 other artists. Jules Massenet, the most prolific composer for the French operatic stage, is amply represented by posters for Manon, Le Cid, Grisélidis, his ballet Cigale, and others. Offenbach, Ambroise Thomas, Léo Delibes, Gabriel Fauré and Henry Février are among the other composers whose works these posters herald.The posters have been reproduced by originals in the collection of Lucy Broido, who has also provided an introduction, a bibliography and extensive notes on each poster with biographies of the artists, printers and composers, anecdotes about the premiere performances and plot summaries. Poster and opera buffs, historians of art and the stage and everyone even slightly fascinated by this time in French music and graphic arts will find this book a particular delight.

    

    Without ever leaving her parents' bed, Josette and her papa take a fantastic airplane ride to the moon and beyond.

    The description for this book, Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France, will be forthcoming.

    Dull contends, and this belief shapes his account of the French navy as the means by which French diplomacy helped to win American independence. The author discusses the place of long-range naval requirements in the French decision to aid the American colonists, the part played by naval rivalry in the transition from limited aid to full-scale war, and the ways naval considerations affected French wartime diplomacy. His book focuses on military strategy and diplomatic requirements in a setting in which military officers themselves did not participate directly in decision-making, but in which diplomats had to take continual account of military needs.Since military action is a means of accomplishing diplomatic goals, even military victory can prove hollow. The author examines the American war not as a successful exercise of French power, but rather as a tragic failure based on economic and political miscalculations. Among the questions he asks are: What relationship did the war bear to overall French diplomacy? What strains did the limited nature of the war impose on French diplomacy and war strategy? How did the results of the war relate to the objectives with which France entered the conflict?Originally published in 1976.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

    Tours the houses, gardens, & landmarks Jefferson frequented during his stay as U.S. Minister & tells us about the people Jefferson befriended. The B&W illustrations have been carefully selected from maps, engravings, drawings, paintings, & other documents of the period. The commentary draws on Jeffersons own correspondence & accounts, as well as the writings of his contemporaries. Evokes the spirit & flavor of late 18th-Century Paris. A delightful visual tour of the houses, gardens, and landmarks Jefferson frequented during his stay as U.S. Minister (1784-1788) that also profiles the people Jefferson befriended, inventions he admired, the book shops and printers he visited, and the theatres, concerts, art sales, and exhibitions of the day. 175 B&W illustrations selected from maps, engravings, drawings, paintings, and other period documents. 156p.

    This is a vivid and provocative account of the surprising military defeat suffered by General Edward Braddock's army at the hands of French and Indian fighters at Fort Duquesne in 1755.