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	Honore de Balzac - Lost Illusions Handsome would-be poet Lucien Chardon is poor and naive, but highly ambitious. Failing to make his name in his dull provincial hometown, he is taken up by a patroness, the captivating married woman Madame de Bargeton, and prepares to forge his way in the glamorous beau monde of Paris. But Lucien has entered a world far more dangerous than he realized, as Madame de Bargeton's reputation becomes compromised and the fickle, venomous denizens of the courts and salons conspire to keep him out of their ranks. Lucien eventually learns that, wherever he goes, talent counts for nothing in comparison to money, intrigue and unscrupulousness. Lost Illusions is one of the greatest novels in the rich procession of the Comedie humaine, Balzac's panoramic social and moral history of his times. Publisher: Penguin Classics ISBN: 0140442510 Published: 1976 Paperback: 720 pages Price: £12.99


	Honore de Balzac - Old Goriot 'His blue eyes, formerly so lively, seemed to have turned a sad leaden grey...People either pitied him or were shocked by him.' Monsieur Goriot is one of a select group of lodgers at Madame Vauquer's Parisian boarding house. At first his wealth inspires respect, but as his circumstances are reduced he becomes shunned by those around him, and soon his only remaining visitors are two beautiful, mysterious young women. Goriot claims that they are his daughters, but his fellow boarders, including master criminal Vautrin, have other ideas. And when Eugene Rastignac, a poor but ambitious law student, learns the truth, he decides to turn it to his advantage. Old Goriot is one of the key novels of Balzac's Comedie Humaine series, and a compelling examination of two obsessions, love and money. Witty and brilliantly detailed, it is a superb study of the bourgeoisie in the years following the French Revolution. Publisher: Penguin Classics ISBN: 0140440178 Published: 1974 Paperback: 304 pages Price: £7.99


	Charles-Pierre Baudelaire - Selected Poems 'I have sought forgetful sleep in love; but love is nothing but a mattress of needles.' The poems of Charles Baudelaire, collected as Les Fleurs du Mal, are filled with unsettling imagery, depicting with intensity subjects dismissed as unpoetic by French literary conventions of the time. 'Tableaux parisiens' describes the poor, the criminal and the forgotten of the modern city - thieves, poets, drunkards, flaunting prostitutes and faded old ladies - yet manages to find beauty in the anonymous settings of their lives. The love poems of 'Spleen et Idéal' combine flights of lyricism and languorous eroticism with sudden, strikingly prosaic detail. Baudelaire's prose poems, to which he gave the title Le Spleen de Paris, contain everything from topical, aggressively political humour to evocations of the rapture inspired by opium. This edition presents the poems in French with English prose translations, and includes an introduction, suggestions for further reading, a glossary and an index of titles and first lines. Publisher: Penguin Classics ISBN: 0140446249 Published: 1995 Paperback: 272 pages Price: £9.99


	Albert Camus - The Outsider 'Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know' Meursault will not lie. Unmoved by his mother's death, he refuses to satisfy the feelings of others by pretending grief. At the end of the funeral, he returns to his simple, bachelor existence in sun-bleached Algiers. Until he is involved in a violent murder and placed on trial. Will he now, with his life in danger, give in to society's demands and 'play the game'? Albert Camus's first novel, The Outsider received instant acclaim when it was published in 1942, and has been translated into forty-five languages. In 1957 Camus became the youngest writer ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize. Publisher: Penguin Classics ISBN: 0141182504 Published: 2000 Paperback: 128 pages Price: £7.99


	Albert Camus - The Plague The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine, each responding in their own way to the lethal bacillus: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame and a few, like Dr Rieux, resist the terror. An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, Camus's novel is in part an allegory for France's suffering under Nazi occupation, and also a story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence. 'An impressive new translation...of this matchless fable of fear, courage and cowardice' - The Independent, London Publisher: Penguin Classics ISBN: 0141185139 Published: 2002 Paperback: 256 pages Price: £7.99


	Alexandre Dumas - The Three Musketeers 'Now, gentlemen, it's one for all and all for one. That's our motto, and I think we should stick to it.' Dumas' tale of swashbuckling and heroism follows the fortunes of d'Artagnan, a headstrong country boy who travels to Paris to join the Musketeers - the bodyguard of King Louis XIII. Here he falls in with Athos, Porthos and Aramis, and the four friends soon find themselves caught up in court politics and intrigue. Together they must outwit Cardinal Richelieu and his plot to gain influence over the King, and thwart the beautiful spy Milady's scheme to disgrace the Queen. In The Three Musketeers, Dumas breathed fresh life into the genre of historical romance, creating a vividly realized cast of characters and a stirring dramatic narrative. The introduction examines Dumas' historical sources, the balance between fact and fiction, and the figures from history that formed the basis for the central characters of The Three Musketeers. Publisher: Penguin Classics ISBN: 0140440259 Published: 1982 Paperback: 720 pages Price: £8.99


	Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary 'Oh, why, dear God, did I marry him?’ Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent devourer of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment, and when real life continues to fail to live up to her romantic expectations the consequences are devastating. Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of Emma Bovary caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for his heroine; but Flaubert insisted: 'Madame Bovary, c’est moi'. Publisher: Penguin Classics ISBN: 0140449124 Published: 2003 Paperback: 384 pages Price: £4.99


	Victor Hugo - Les Misérables 'He was no longer Jean Valjean, but No. 24601.' Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat: by his own conscience, when, owing to a case of mistaken identity, another man is arrested in his place; and by the relentless investigations of the dogged policeman Javert. It is not simply for himself that Valjean must stay free, however, for he has sworn to protect the baby daughter of Fantine, driven to prostitution by poverty. A compelling and compassionate view of the victims of early nineteenth-century French society, Les Misérables is a novel on an epic scale, moving inexorably from the eve of the battle of Waterloo to the July Revolution of 1830. Publisher: Penguin Classics ISBN: 0140444300 Published: 1982 Paperback: 1232 pages Price: £9.99


	Jean-Baptiste Moliere - The Miser and Other Plays Molière (1622-73) combined all the traditional elements of comedy - wit, slapstick, spectacle and satire - with a deep understanding of character to create richly sophisticated dramas which have always delighted audiences. Most are built around dangerously deluded and obsessive heroes such as The Miser who threaten to blight the lives of those around them. In his first great triumph, The School for Wives (newly translated for this edition), an ageing domestic tyrant is foiled in his plans to wed his young ward. Although this was fiercely criticized for mocking the 'sacred' institution of marriage - to which Molière hit back with a play defending his aims and techniques, The School for Wives Criticized - it was the alleged atheism of his dark, subversive version of Don Juan that struck the blackest note. Finally, in The Hypochondriac, the terminally ill author produced a hilarious exposé of the ways doctors use medical mumbo-jumbo to fleece their patients. Like Shakespeare, Molière was a true man of the theatre whose comedies blend sharp insight into human nature with an unerring sense of what would work on stage and make people laugh. Publisher: Penguin Classics ISBN: 0140447288 Published: 2000 Paperback: 336 pages Price: £8.99


	Anais Nin - Henry and June Drawn from journals, this book is an account of a woman's sexual awakening, covering a single momentous year - 1931-32, in Paris, when June fell in love with Henry Miller, undermining her own idealized marriage. The question of the outcome of June Miller's return to Paris dominates her thoughts. Partly of Spanish origin, Anaïs Nin was also of Cuban, French and Danish descent. She was born in Paris and spent her childhood in various parts of Europe. Her father left the family for another woman, which shocked Anaïs profoundly and was the reason for her mother to take her and her two brothers to live in the United States. Later Anaïs Nin moved to Paris with her husband, and they lived in France from 1924 to 1939, when Americans left on account of the war. The quality and originality of her work were evident at an early stage but, as is often the case with avant-garde writers, it took time for her to achieve wide recognition. The international publication of her Journals won her new admirers in many parts of the world, particularly among young people and students. Her novels, Ladders to Fire, Children of the Albatross, The Four-Chambered Heart, A Spy in the House of Love and Seduction of the Minotaur were first published in the United States between the 1940s and the 1960s, and eventually gathered in Cities of the Interior. She also wrote a collection of short stories, Under a Glass Bell. In the 1940s she began to write erotica for an anonymous client, and these pieces are collected in Delta of Venus and Little Birds (both published posthumously). Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages around the world. Publisher: Penguin Classics ISBN: 0141183284 Published: 2001 Paperback: 288 pages Price: £7.99


	Francois Voltaire - Candide In this glorious satire, Voltaire brilliantly challenges the idea current in his day that 'all is for the best in the best of all worlds'. The naive Candide is literally kicked out of his childhood home when unfairly accused of sexual attentions towards his idol Lady Cunégonde. Yet Pangloss, the learned philosopher, has taught him the positive notion that all is for the best. And throughout his hilarious adventures and misfortunes, Candide remains true to Pangloss's creed, even when faced with ridiculous examples of injustice, suffering and despair. His incessant optimism appears to be justified in El Dorado, a Utopian land in which money and possessions are deemed worthless, yet ironically Candide is restless to leave this ideal society in search of worldly fulfilment. Voltaire's scathing attack on vain and dreamy philosophizing remains as controversial and entertaining today as on its first publication in 1759. Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0140440046 Published: 1974 Paperback: 144 pages, 129 x 198 mm Price: £3.50

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