Adolphe
  • Published: 1 December 2010
  • ISBN: 9781935554097
  • Imprint: Melville House
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $22.99

Adolphe

Formats & editions
EBook
25 May 2006
Paperback
1 Dec 2010
Paperback
1 Dec 1980
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A classic, if rare, novella -- the fictionalized account of Constant's romance with Madame de Staël

We are such volatile creatures that we finally feel the sentiments we feign.

First published in 1816, Adolphe is the story of a young man with all the privileges and advantages of a noble birth, bt who's still haunted by the meaninglessness of life. He seeks distraction in the pursuit of the beautiful, but older and married Ellenore, a fictionalized version of Madame de Stael. The young Adolphe, inexperienced in love, falls for her unexpectedly and falters under the burden of the illicit love.

The Art of The Novella Series

Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.
  • Published: 1 December 2010
  • ISBN: 9781935554097
  • Imprint: Melville House
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Benjamin Constant

French politician and writer Benjamin Constant combined an extremely lively political career with fertile literary output and an enthusiastic series of liaisons with some of France's most prominent women. Among them were two of his mistresses, Madame de Stael and Madame Recamier, as well as his two wives.

Praise for Adolphe

"Small wonders."--Time Out London
"I wanted them all, even those I'd already read."--Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer
"[F]irst-rate...astutely selected and attractively packaged...indisputably great works."--Adam Begley, The New York Observer
"I've always been haunted by Bartleby, the proto-slacker. But it's the handsomely minimalist cover of the Melville House edition that gets me here, one of many in the small publisher's fine 'Art of the Novella' series."--The New Yorker
"The Art of the Novella series is sort of an anti-Kindle. What these singular, distinctive titles celebrate is book-ness. They're slim enough to be portable but showy enough to be conspicuously consumed--tiny little objects that demand to be loved for the commodities they are."--KQED (NPR San Francisco)
"Some like it short, and if you're one of them, Melville House, an independent publisher based in Brooklyn, has a line of books for you... elegant-looking paperback editions ...a good read in a small package."--The Wall Street Journal