Alma Classics 101 Pages – serie

Nathanael remains haunted by his childhood fear that the lawyer Coppelius, a strange night-time visitor who used to come to his house to conduct alchemical experiments with his father – the latter dying as a consequence of one of these sessions – was none other than the Sandman, a mythical figure who was said to steal the eyes of children who refused to go to sleep. When a mysterious Italian salesman comes to town, Nathanael’s suspicions are reawakened, pushing him to the brink of madness as extraordinary events unfold.First published in 1816, this classic of German Gothic fiction has enthralled generations ever since, and has spawned countless interpretations by critics intrigued by its powerful symbolism. Sigmund Freud famously examined the novella in relation to his concept of the “Uncanny”, and an extract from this analysis is included in this volume.

Only edition in print"In A Voyage to the Moon, the narrator, after an attempt to reach the moon using vials of dewdrops, finally finds himself in what appears to be the Garden of Eden, surrounded by Biblical patriarchs. After falling foul of the prophet Elijah, he soon meets a race who walk on all fours and whose nourishment comes in the form of vapour.Published posthumously and intended mainly as a satire of its age, this imaginative and entertaining tale – here presented in a lively translation by Andrew Brown – is now considered one of the pioneering works of science fiction."

Only edition in printA carriage transporting ten passengers fleeing from Rouen is stopped at a village inn by Prussian soldiers, who decide to detain them until one of their party, the prostitute Boule de Suif, consents to sleep with their officer. When Boule de Suif refuses to do so on account of her principles and patriotic sentiments, the solidarity initially manifested by her fellow travellers becomes increasingly tested as the deadlock continues, and the strained relationship between her and her “respectable” counterparts gradually worsens.A scathing satire of bourgeois prejudice and hypocrisy and a compelling snapshot of France during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, ‘Boule de Suif’ – here presented with five other major stories by the author of Bel Ami – was declared a masterpiece by Flaubert and is widely considered to be Maupassant’s finest short story.

Only edition in printThe notorious adventurer and seducer Giacomo Casanova tells of his travels – on the run from the authorities of his native Venice – around northern Europe, poking fun at the ruling classes he encounters there, before focusing on a pivotal incident that occurs in Warsaw. Insulted by a Polish count over an Italian ballerina, Casanova finds himself forced to challenge his rival to a duel, and the sequence of events and their aftermath are described with gusto by the narrator.A rollicking autobiographical account by one of the most iconic figures of eighteenth-century Europe, The Duel is presented here with an extract about the same event from Casanova’s memoirs, written fifteen years later.

Only edition in printOn a visit to a provincial town to see his sister Nina who is suffering from cancer, Alexei Laptev, who works for his father’s Moscow haberdashery business, falls in love with Yulia, the daughter of her doctor, and proposes to her. Although she does not reciprocate his feelings, she agrees to marry him and live with him in the capital, where the couple’s relationship is marred by tensions: Yulia is filled with regrets about her choice and boredom with her new existence, while Alexei is nagged by the suspicion that she married him for his money alone. However, as time passes and misfortune strikes, they both learn to reassess all of their assumptions.Chekhov’s second longest prose work after The Steppe, Three Years is, in the author’s own words, “a novel of Moscow life” and an examination of its merchant classes. A powerful story of redemption and the nuances of human relationships, the novella helped cement Chekhov’s reputation as a major figure in Russian literature.

Frank Aldersley becomes engaged to Clara Burnham on the eve of his departure on a journey to discover the Northwest Passage. Unbeknownst to him, Richard Wardour, his spurned rival, joins the crew of another ship belonging to the same expedition. When the ships get trapped in the ice and the men are randomly drawn into the same search party, Richard finds himself torn between his desire for revenge and the need for solidarity in the face of adversity.Based on an actual doomed mission to the Arctic captained by Sir John Franklin, and initially written for the stage in collaboration with Dickens – who also acted in the play – The Frozen Deep is an action-packed tale of vengeance and sacrifice.

The small town of Mordasov is all abuzz at the arrival of Prince K—, a wealthy, ageing landowner, after an absence of several years. Maria Alexandrovna Moskalyova, a local gossip and fearsome schemer, decides that he would be an advantageous match for her daughter Zina. But in her endeavours to make such a union come about, she must contend with rival matchmakers and Zina’s wilfulness.Written soon after Dostoevsky was released from the prison camp that inspired The House of the Dead, Uncle’s Dream shares very little of that novel’s gloomy tone and contains many elements of a light, drawing-room farce. Beneath the surface, however, lies a sharply satirical voice which looks ahead in part to later novels such as Devils.

Only edition in printFound in the Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci’s writings and drawings, ‘The Prophecies’ are a collection of enigmatic divinatory pronouncements, some punning and playful, others dire and ominous. While the author’s intentions behind these utterances are unclear, they clearly attest to the artist’s fevered and troubled imagination and offer a glimpse into a world very similar to that depicted in his lost painting The Battle of Anghiari. This volume also contains a further selection of Leonardo da Vinci’s fragmentary writings, in the form of fables and aphorisms. Taken together, these pieces provide an invaluable insight into the thought processes of one of the Renaissance’s most productive minds.

Initially composed by Poe as a public lecture towards the end of his career and considered by him the culmination of all his life’s work, Eureka is an extended treatise about the creation, existence and the ultimate end of the world. An idiosyncratic blend of creative writing and scientific discourse, with unexpected forays into comedy and wordplay, this self-styled “prose poem” is a genre-defying masterpiece.Although it baffled the reading public of its time, Eureka found many prominent admirers, from Charles Baudelaire to W.H. Auden, and has since assembled an audience receptive to its unique appeal as a compendium of European thought that anticipated many current theories and discoveries while also pioneering many elements of science-fiction aesthetics.

Only edition in printPublished in 1880, one year before Verga’s influential novel The Malavoglias, Life in the Country first marked his stylistic shift towards the verismo school of Italian realism. The collection’s centrepiece, ‘Rustic Honour’ (‘Cavalleria rusticana’) – which was famously adapted into a play by the author before becoming an opera by Mascagni – tells the tale of Turiddu, a poor young man who returns from military service and finds himself embroiled in adultery and a feud with a rival.Also including the well-known stories ‘She-Wolf’ and ‘Foxfur’, Life in the Country captures, in an objective, non-judgemental prose, the difficult conditions and personal struggles of the peasant class in his native Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century.

When Emily Dickinson died in 1886, having published only a tiny selection of her verse anonymously in journals and newspapers, she left behind a chest containing almost 1,800 poems written on notebooks and loose sheets. Her family members, starting with her sister Lavinia, began editing and compiling them for publication, and one of the most celebrated collections, The Single Hound, was prepared by her niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi and published in 1914. This volume, containing some of Dickinson’s most original and poignant pieces, helped cement her reputation as one of America’s most important poets. Sparse and experimental, yet accessible and intimate, the compositions included in The Single Hound provide an ideal introduction to Dickinson’s genius.

Only edition in printAn old man arrives at the offices of the lawyer Derville, claiming to be Colonel Chabert, a hero of the Napoleonic Wars who was left for dead on the battlefield, but in fact managed to survive under a pile of corpses before spending years as a recovering amnesiac. Having returned to Paris and discovered that his wife has married an aristocrat who has liquidated all his assets, Chabert enlists the help of Derville to recover both his name and his fortune.Part of Balzac’s La Comédie humaine cycle, Colonel Chabert is a poignant tale about the pursuit of justice, as well as a portrait of France’s transition from the Napoleonic Empire to the Restoration. Inspired by actual events, the novella has captured the imagination of generations of readers and has been adapted for the stage and screen numerous times.

“In the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven… two idle apprentices, exhausted by the long, hot summer, and the long, hot work it had brought with it, ran away from their employer.” Under the pseudonyms of Francis Goodchild and Thomas Idle, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins set off on a walking tour of the north-west of England, reporting back on their adventures for Dickens’s magazine Household Words.A unique insight into the friendship of two of the towering figures of Victorian literature, and featuring a pair of chilling ghost stories from the leading exponents of the genre, The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices is a charming evocation of the adventures they experienced on their trip and the gently mocking nature of their relationship.

Only edition in printTravelling salesman Enrico Gaia decides to play a trick on the conceited ageing littérateur Mario Samigli: he dupes him into thinking that a representative of a prestigious Viennese publishing house wants to commission a German translation of a long-forgotten novel Samigli had written and published at his own expense forty years ago. This leads the old man to reach new heights of self-delusion, spurred on by Gaia’s succession of ruses.In this tragicomic study of deception and disappointment, Italo Svevo – who himself was an undiscovered writer until his old age – parodies elements of his own life and offers an insightful psychological portrait of a person who has lost touch with reality.

Having frittered away his family’s fortune in Paris, the profligate Guido, driven by his ungovernable passions, is forced out of his native Genoa and harbours plans for revenge. After a mighty storm, he sees a mysterious, misshapen creature approaching from the sea, with whom he makes an infernal bargain to exchange bodies, with momentous consequences.First published in 1831 and here presented with the supernatural stories ‘The Evil Eye’ and ‘The Mortal Immortal’, the chilling Gothic tale ‘Transformation’ is a paragon of the genre by the author of Frankenstein.

Only edition in printFamed for having killed his cousin Alessandro, the Duke of Florence, in 1537, but also for writing accomplished literary works, including a comedy and several poems, Lorenzino de’ Medici remains one of the most enigmatic figures of Italian literature. In his masterpiece, Apology for a Murder, he reveals the inner motives behind his act, portraying himself as a hero to be numbered alongside the great tyrannicides of ancient Rome and Greece.Lorenzino himself, in 1548, was murdered by two soldiers hired either by the emperor Charles V or by Cosimo, Alessandro’s successor as Duke, and this volume includes the dramatic account of his killing by Francesco Bibboni, one of the assassins, as well as a selection of Lorenzino’s poems, giving a fully rounded image of the antihero of Alfred de Musset’s Lorenzaccio.

Only edition in printStephen Glennard is in desperate need of money. So when he becomes aware of the potential value of a series of passionate love letters written to him by the recently deceased author Margaret Aubyn, he sells them and marries the beautiful Alexa Trent. However, his shame and guilt at building a new life on the betrayal of another’s love slowly begins to eat away at him, and Margaret’s memory has a power that can reach him from beyond the grave.The first of Edith Wharton’s works depicting life in “old New York”, The Touchstone is an acutely observed novella , and an exploration of the tension between self-serving opportunism and the desire to live a moral life.

Only edition in printIn the somnolent Flemish town of Quiquendone disagreements are unheard of, courtships might last a decade and not a ripple of activity can be seen at all. But when the mysterious Dr Ox is tasked with providing lighting for the town, strange things begin to happen: animals become aggressive, fruits grow huge in size, plants climb more vigorously and tempers flare up, leading the once phlegmatic townsfolk to bitter confrontations and pushing them to the brink of all-out violence.Verne, the acclaimed author of immortal tales of adventure and early science fiction, can be seen here in a different light, regaling readers of all ages with a light-hearted satire that, in its warnings about the dangers of scientific experimentation, has a clear and troubling resonance with our times.

Only edition in printIn the 1940s, Picasso wrote two plays in French: the first, Desire Caught by the Tail, was conceived during the German occupation of Paris and features a cast of grotesque allegorical characters such as the Onion, Silence or Fat Anxiety discussing the crucial wartime themes of hunger, cold and love; the second, The Four Little Girls, came about a few years after the end of the war on the French Riviera, and presents the stream-of-consciousness thoughts of four unnamed girls in a vegetable garden, revealing an unexpectedly evil aspect of childhood.These surreal compositions, which were meant to be read aloud rather than formally staged, are a testament to the great artist’s imaginative powers, and have been considered as forerunners to the theatre of the absurd of the 1950s, as exemplified by Beckett, Ionesco and Adamov.

"Written after Woolf had finished her emotionally draining work on The Waves, Flush purports to be an autobiography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s eponymous cocker spaniel, charting the dog’s early days in the countryside, his adoption by the famous poet, his subsequent life in London and his travels with his owners to Italy.While the resulting narrative is light-hearted and playful on the surface, Woolf ingeniously uses the faux-naif impressions of her animal narrator to voice her social criticism on topics such as the class system and the relationship between man and woman. Much like its predecessor Orlando, Flush is a genre-defying blend of biography and fantasy, and an accessible yet stylistically innovative jeu d’esprit."

Only edition in print"In ‘The Wave’, a young man falls dangerously in love with the tenant downstairs, who is engaged to be married; in ‘The Signorina’, a flirtatious young woman is caught between her feelings and her parents’ desire for a good match; in ‘A Friend to the Wives’, the peerless Pia Tolosani leaves a trail of regret in the life of a former suitor.In this collection of stories – Pirandello’s first published work of fiction – the master of Italian modernism dissects the passions that are either dimly felt or unrequited, ultimately raising doubts about the very nature and existence of love, while simultaneously foreshadowing the themes and the psychologically nuanced characters that he would go on to develop in his later works."

Only edition in print"Rising from humble beginnings as a foundling, Castruccio Castracani came to prominence as one of the most powerful and shrewd warlords in Italy. Indeed, Machiavelli argues, so great was his vigour and charisma that - had he not been prevented by his untimely death - he might have surpassed in fame the great generals of antiquity and brought all the territories of Italy under his sole dominion.Written in Machiavelli's characteristically lucid and terse style, Life of Castruccio Castracani is not only a key text in understanding the development of the author's ideas on leadership and good statesmanship that would find fuller expression in The Prince, but also a revealing account of the political ferment and fractious factionalism of fourteenth-century Italy.This edition is accompanied by selected passages from Machiavelli's Florentine Histories and a detailed map with historical notes."

As Paris is shaken by a spate of murderous robberies, the aristocratic Mademoiselle de Scuderi pens a poem to poke fun at the cowardly lovers who now fear to go out at night to see their mistresses. But when she receives an unexpected visit from a young man, who gives her a box of jewels with a note thanking her for supporting the robbers' cause, the elderly writer is plunged into a dangerous web of passion, intrigue and murder.First published in 1819 to great acclaim, and displaying all the author's trademark wit and ingenuity, E.T.A. Hoffmann's tale has inspired and delighted writers and readers ever since, and remains a benchmark for all modern crime novels.

Only edition in printThe lowly, downtrodden Paris civil servant Jean Folantin seeks respite from the boredom and isolation of his life in the small joys of food and the occasional embraces of a prostitute. But whatever he does, wherever he turns in his quest for some pleasure, his dissatisfaction only increases, until he is forced to realize that he has to abandon all hope and just “go with the flow”. This 1882 novella, a key work in Huysmans’ literary development – prefiguring in its protagonist the figure of Jean des Esseintes, the hero of À rebours, written two years later – is accompanied here by another masterly study of human despair, ‘M. Bougran’s Retirement’.

Only edition in printWhen Paul d’Aspremont travels to Naples to join Alicia Ward, his beautiful fiancée, he is surprised to see her grow pale under his gaze, and to discover that an Italian suitor, Count Altavilla, is trying to win her affections. Soon the strange gestures and whispers of the locals convince him – against his better judgement – that indeed he has the evil eye, and that he must resort to extreme measures if he wants to shield Alicia from its deadly effects.This 1856 novella from the master of fantasy and the supernatural, featuring one of the most hauntingly surreal denouements in nineteenth-century fiction, is a brilliant and witty examination of man’s innermost fantasies and fears.

Only edition in printA secret terrorist group infiltrates the household of a government official’s son, with a view to spying on the father and, ultimately, assassinating him. But the young man entrusted with the task – an ailing, world-weary “nobody” – seized with the purposelessness of life and a sense of his own impending death, gradually becomes disillusioned with his mission, and decides to embark on a new path which will lead him to tragedy.Combining psychological detail with a strong sense of place and time, The Story of a Nobody bears all the hallmarks of Chekhov’s genius, and perfectly captures the political and social tensions of its day.

A respectable young widow and mother of two children, the Marquise of O— finds herself inexplicably pregnant after being rescued by a Russian officer from the attentions of his soldiers during the storming of her town’s citadel. Convinced of her own innocence and wishing to vindicate her own integrity, the Marquise places an advert in the newspapers, appealing for the father to come forward and promising to marry him. But will this be enough to quench her family’s doubts and the derision of the society around her? Will this help her solve the mystery and urge the perpetrator to acknowledge paternity of the child?One of the great classics of German literature, Heinrich von Kleist’s sexually charged novella is as edgy today as it was when it was first published in 1808, and is accompanied here by two other celebrated stories, ‘The Earthquake in Chile’ and ‘The Foundling’, showcasing the range of their author’s narrative abilities and his taste for the ambiguous and the paradoxical.

When the young American Frederick Winterbourne meets his compatriot Daisy Miller in the garden of a grand hotel in Switzerland, he is struck by her beauty, but slightly unsettled by her open ways and her flirtatiousness. Undeterred by this and by his aunt’s disapproval, he invites her to join him in a jaunt to a nearby castle, little suspecting that this will set in train a sequence of events that promises to be a source of heartache and disappointment for him, and threatens to compromise his own social acceptability.One of Henry James’s most enduringly popular works, Daisy Miller, here published in its 1909 version, incorporating the author’s final revisions, is a masterly, psychologically nuanced dissection of social mores and a merciless critique of convention and staid respectability.

A first-person diary of a prisoner’s final day before being executed for an unspecified crime, Victor Hugo’s poignant tale vividly conveys the mental anguish of a man confronted with the intransigent mechanism of justice, as his mind seeks refuge in recollections from his past and philosophical musings on his inevitable fate.As relevant today as when it was first published in 1829, The Last Day of a Condemned Man is an eloquent plea for compassion and a masterpiece of realist fiction. This edition includes the Preface to the 1832 edition of the book, a manifest of Hugo’s personal opinions, ‘A Comedy about a Tragedy’ and ‘Claude Gueux’, an early example of “true crime” fiction.