Folio Archives 274: Une Vie by Guy de Maupassant 1981
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1wcarter
Une Vie by Guy de Maupassant 1981
Une Vie (A Life) is a romance, a tragedy, a commentary on the Catholic Church, a travelogue and an insight into life at the beginning of the 19th. century. It reads very easily and draws you along as you follow the life of a woman from when she leaves a convent at 17 after four years of education, until old age.
Our heroine, Jeanne, is a member of the French minor aristocracy, and in 1815 when the story begins, she lives with her parents on an estate in Normandy overlooking the Atlantic. The story beautifully portrays the life of those in her community, her emotions, loves, hates and adventures. The intricate web of interconnections between the lives of everyone around Jeanne is hinted at by the broken spiderweb cover motif.
The small 238 page book is introduced by Mervyn Horder and translated by Katharine Vivian. There are nine lithographs by Laszlo Acs. The endpapers are dark brown, and the book is quarter bound in brown cloth with gilt spine titling running from bottom to top. The yellow-brown paper covers are both printed with a brown pattern. The 23.2x13.6cm. slipcase is a textured yellow-brown.
An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed here.
Une Vie (A Life) is a romance, a tragedy, a commentary on the Catholic Church, a travelogue and an insight into life at the beginning of the 19th. century. It reads very easily and draws you along as you follow the life of a woman from when she leaves a convent at 17 after four years of education, until old age.
Our heroine, Jeanne, is a member of the French minor aristocracy, and in 1815 when the story begins, she lives with her parents on an estate in Normandy overlooking the Atlantic. The story beautifully portrays the life of those in her community, her emotions, loves, hates and adventures. The intricate web of interconnections between the lives of everyone around Jeanne is hinted at by the broken spiderweb cover motif.
The small 238 page book is introduced by Mervyn Horder and translated by Katharine Vivian. There are nine lithographs by Laszlo Acs. The endpapers are dark brown, and the book is quarter bound in brown cloth with gilt spine titling running from bottom to top. The yellow-brown paper covers are both printed with a brown pattern. The 23.2x13.6cm. slipcase is a textured yellow-brown.
An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed here.
2bacchus.
Thank you. Never read it but your summary got me in the mood; and the lithographs got me enabled.
3AnnieMod
That's one of my favorite Folio books (production-wise) - together with "Black Mischief" from the same year. Both of them look like light-weights next to heftier volumes but they are exactly what made me like Folio (even if I discovered them much later than when they were published).
PS: The image for the Black Mischief 1981 edition is wrong in our "COMPLETE LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY THE FOLIO SOCIETY" (it shows the 2016 version).
PS: The image for the Black Mischief 1981 edition is wrong in our "COMPLETE LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY THE FOLIO SOCIETY" (it shows the 2016 version).
4wcarter
>3 AnnieMod:
Removed. Will fix later.
Removed. Will fix later.
5ian_curtin
A solid, old-school FS production. Lots to like. I would definitely go for an updated Maupassant - stories, or Bel-Ami. They haven't done any for 20+ years, and even at that, new translations are available now. Seems a long shot given the make-up of current releases though.
6boldface
>1 wcarter:
Just a small point, Warwick. You say the book has "gilt spine titling running from bottom to top." This means that most of your binding illustrations above are upside down.
Just a small point, Warwick. You say the book has "gilt spine titling running from bottom to top." This means that most of your binding illustrations above are upside down.
7AnnieMod
>6 boldface: Ha, I missed that above. It is also a slightly annoying book to shelve - because it has no logo on the spine and even looking at the covers or the slipcase does not help, I keep shelving it the wrong way around (together with A Russian Gentleman - so lately they both live together next to a Folio from the same times with a logo on the spine to orient it). :)
8overthemoon
the cover design looks more like a skeleton leaf than a spider web (sorry to spoil your metaphor).
