Here are the original eight stories from the 1697 volume Contes de temps passé by the great Charles Perrault (1628–1703) in a translation that retains the charming and unsentimental simplicity that has won Perrault a permanent position in French litera
La Fontaine (1621-95) is best known for his comic and delightful fables. This lively new translation of the most famous among them captures the wit and nuances of the original. The selection - of 110 of the 240 Fables - spans La Fontaine's long writing li
"His Don Quixote … from its first to its last page [is] a marvel of imagination, poetry, sentiment, and sarcasm. . . . People still speak of it only as 'Doré's Don Quixote'." — Life and Reminiscences of Gustave DoréDoré himself had something of Qui
Gustave Doré (1832–83) was perhaps the most successful illustrator of the nineteenth century. His Doré Bible was a treasured possession in countless homes, and his best-received works continued to appear through the years in edition after edition. His
Nowhere but in the Bible were dramatic textual material and the artistry of Gustave Doré more perfectly matched. The Book of Books seemed to unleash a new power of creation in Doré not apparent in his previous work. In the Creation scenes, the horrifyin
Gustave Doré's Romantic style of illustration, supremely imaginative and richly detailed, was ideally suited to literary subjects. His wood-engraved illustrations for John Milton's monumental epic poem Paradise Lost, recounting mankind's fall from the gr
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere") is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Modern editions use
London in the middle of the 1800s was a subject endlessly sketched by artists, studied by social reformers, and discussed by writers. This comprehensive collection of drawings by Gustave Doré, France's most celebrated graphic artist of the period, presen
A certain eighteenth-century German noble ventured abroad for military service and returned with a series of amusingly outrageous stories. Baron Munchausen's astounding feats included riding cannonballs, traveling to the Moon, and pulling himself out of a
