Letters to Pauline

By Stendhal, Foreword by Adam Thirlwell, Translated by Andrew Brown

Hesperus Classics

LITERARY COLLECTIONS

166 Pages, 5 x 8

Trade Paper, $15.95 (US $15.95) (CA $17.95)

Publication Date: October 2011

ISBN 9781843911678

Rights: US, CA, AU & NZ

Hesperus Press (Oct 2011)

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Overview

A selection of Stendhal’s inspiring letters to his sister, written in his usual apparently artless, unbuttoned, sparkling style.

Determined to take his deeply loved younger sister Pauline’s education in hand, Henri Beyle—better known by the most famous of his scores of noms de plume, Stendhal—was obliged to continue her tuition in epistolary fashion on leaving Grenoble. In his letters to her he instructs her in what she should read (Plutarch, Molière, and Shakespeare); what to study (philosophy, logic, mathematics, and music); whether or not to get married (and to what kind of man); and generally how to enliven the tedium of a French provincial town. At the same time, he encourages her to think for herself—a process that, inevitably, reveals what he thought when thinking for himself.

Reviews

"This intelligently presented selection of letters from an elder brother to his favourite sister covers Stendhal's early years. . . . It was an inspired editorial decision to isolate the letters to Pauline, for it is here that his writing is honed as a form of address. . . . The letters are also, poignantly, a window on the limitations of the lives of women." —Times Literary Supplement

Author Biography

Stendhal (1783–1842) is most famous for his two realist masterpieces, La Chartreuse de Parme and Le Rouge et le Noir, which deal with the political and social landscape of Restoration France and Italy.

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