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Stories by Catherine Bernard, François Fénelon, Louis de Mailly and Jean de Préchac. This volume includes three tales by Catherine Bernard (1662-1712), one of the originators of contes de fées, that deliberately subvert not merely their narrative strategy, but also their entire mythology; two enigmatic allegories of French history as seen through the prism of…
X. B. Saintine (1978-1865) was a prolific dramatist who collaborated in more than 200 plays with Eugène Scribe and a noted figure of the Romantic Movement. Jonathan the Visionary (1823) is a collection of fantasy tales told by a mysterious immortal called Jonathan (who is only featured as an active narrator in a few of…
In The Mysterious Hermit of the Tomb (1816), the evil Arembert consigns his father to a dark dungeon, and has his brother assassinated in order to get his hands on the vast family estate of Saint-Felix. But unbeknownst to him, his brother has survived and returns in the guise of a strange Hermit, intent on…
Maurice Magre (1877-1941) was one of the most far-ranging and extravagant French writers of fantastic fiction in the first half of the 20th century, and perhaps the finest of them, because of the fertility and versatility of his imagination and the manner and purpose for which he deployed it. This volume, the seventh of a…
From the deadly streets of St. Petersburg to the Palaces of India, from the back alleys of Paris to the deck of the Titanic, this prodigious saga tells the story of the death of Fantômas, and of his arch-nemesis, Detective Juve. Defying the Tsar’s secret police, Russian anarchists, Thuggee from India and Parasian Apaches, Juve,…
The End of Atlantis (1926) extends a rich tradition of French literary fantasies redeploying the myth of Atlantis; it is a historical melodrama, an adventure story and a heroic fantasy depicting the fall of the great and marvelous Empire of Atlantis. The novel is more sophisticated than most Atlantean fantasies. Its account of the fall…
The Apocryphal Napoleon (1836) by Louis Geoffroy, a French Magistrate, is celebrated as the first extended exercise in “alternate history.” In it, Napoleon succeeds in subduing Russia in 1812, invades England in 1814 and goes on to become the enlightened ruler of the world. The book details with great and methodical precision the conquest of…
The Virgin Orient, an Epic Novel of the Year 2000 (1897) is the account of a preventive strike by Europe, united under the government of Anarchism, against the perceived Yellow Peril. Even though his accounts of two crucial battles fought in India are extended and bloody, Mauclair’s primary purpose is not to detail the war…
“Let’s return to Baker Street, Harry,” he said. “The evidence is indisputable; the conclusion inescapable… We face Fantômas!” Southampton, England, 1910. Jack the Ripper is back — or is he? A series of ghastly murders are reported near the estate of Lord Beltham. Young detective Harry Dickson is mentored by Sherlock Holmes to take over…
The Voyages of Lord Seaton to the Seven Planets (1766) is an interplanetary romance in the tradition of Cyrano de Bergerac’s History of the States and Empires of the Moon. In it, the eponymous hero and his sister Monime travel to the seven planets of the Solar System on the wings of the genie Zachiel….
1914. The Frankenstein Monster moves like a shadowy specter through the bloody trenches of war-torn France. Coming across Herbert West, a scientist as brilliant and insane as his creator, the infamous Victor Frankenstein, the creature secures the promise that West will create a mate for him, but only if he can gather all the bizarre…
The World of Mercury was first published in 1750 before Voltaire’s MicromÃ(c)gas (1752) or Tiphaigne’s Amilec (1753). In developing his world, Béthune shaped one of the few “Creationist fantasies” entirely unaffected by religious dogma. His Mercury shines with originality, adventurousness and, especially, bizarrerie. The description of the aerial conflict between the defenders of Mercury’s Great…
Odette Dulac’s The War of the Sexes (1926) describes a strangely fanciful sexual biology, combined with insectile analogies and an astrological theory of evolution. It incorporates an idiosyncratic mysticism based on Buddhist and Hindu ideas, filtered through the reinterpretations of theosophist feminism. The result of that triple layering of fantastic notions produced a unique literary…
The Couple (1924) is the concluding volume in Victor Margueritte’s trilogy, following The Bacheloress (1922) and The Companion (1923). It features both of the couples formed in the course of the earlier novels-Monique Lerbier and George Blanchet, and Annik Raimbert and Amédée Jacquemin, respectfully-but focuses primarily on their children and the broad social implications of…
The Companion (1923) by Victor Margueritte is the second novel in the trilogy that begins with his 1922 controversial best-seller, The Bacheloress, and concludes with The Couple (1924). In contrast to the victimized Monique Lerbier, heroine of The Bacheloress, who appears in this novel in a supporting role, Annik Raimber is, a staunch proto-feminist with…
War-anticipation stories began to published just before World War I, reflecting the mood of the times. During the war itself, the archetypal thriller was likely to be a covert spy story featuring new, game-changing technologies and embryonic superweapons. Once the subgenre was established, it was maintained even in peacetime by its inherent melodramatic potential-it is…
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