Aesthetics

A collection of Valéry’s writings on the making of “works of the mind”—in art, philosophy, history, and scienceFor Paul Valéry, art consisted of all that the mind makes for its own pleasure and use, not only works of art in the usual sense but also philosophy, history, and the pure sciences—in hi...

Album

Album provides an unparalleled look into Roland Barthes's life of letters. It presents a selection of correspondence, from his adolescence through the last years of his life. The first English-language publication of Barthes's letters, Album is a comprehensive testimony to one of the most influen...

An anthology

A compelling selection of Valéry’s poetry and proseDrawn from the authoritative Collected Works of Paul Valéry, this anthology offers an introduction to the diverse genius of this important poet and essayist. The volume features “The Evening with Monsieur Teste” (1896), from Jackson Mathews’s Nat...

Analects

A collection of Valéry’s shorter prose writingsThis book brings together smaller volumes and booklets in which Paul Valéry published selections of his shorter prose writings: aphorisms, moral reflections, poetic observations, flashes of wit or fancy, even jokes—a variety of remarks and impression...

Anne of france: lessons for my daughter

Anne of France (1461-1522) composed these lessons - presented as a portrait of an ideal princess - as guidance in negotiating the pitfalls facing a woman in the world of politics. First English translation.Anne of France (1461-1522), daughter of Louis XI and sister of Charles VIII, was one of the...

Artaud anthology

"I am the man," wrote Artaud, "who has best charted his inmost self." Antonin Artaud was a great poet who, like Poe, Holderlin, and Nerval, wanted to live in the infinite and asked that the human spirit burn in absolute freedom.To society, he was a madman. Artaud, however, was not insane but in l...

Departures

As usual, Isabelle Eberhardt's stormy love affair with the Algerian desert sets the physical and emotional scene in this collection of short stories. Written in French in the late 1800s and translated by Karim Hamdy and Laura Rice, her characters live, love, work, and die with passions as fierce ...

Everyone dies young

A meditation in the style of Proust and Perec on the abstract relation of age to knowing ourselves and others.

Expectation

Expectation is a collection of critical texts on literature written between 1977 and 2012 and now made available for the first time in English.

History and politics

A collection of Valéry writings on politics and international affairsPaul Valéry was deeply interested in politics and actively involved in international affairs as a spokesperson for the League of Nations and as France’s representative to two of the League’s bodies—the Committee on Intellectual ...

Idée fixe

An informal dialogue of ideas in which Valéry paints a witty portrait of himselfOffhand, personal, and amusing, Paul Valéry’s Idée Fixe is an informal imaginative dialogue of ideas in which two men vacationing at the sea seek refuge from boredom by engaging in intellectual banter about human natu...

Laure

Leonardo, poe, mallarmé

A collection of Valéry’s essays on three artists who were of central importance to himPaul Valéry had an enduring fascination with Leonardo, Poe, and Mallarmé and his essays on these fellow artists are among his most important writings. This volume presents those essays along with extensive selec...

Masters and friends

A collection of Valéry’s essays and speeches on a wide range of philosophers, novelists, and poetsMasters and Friends is a collection of Paul Valéry’s essays and speeches on writers who shaped his mind, interests, and affections: Descartes, Voltaire, Stendhal, Goethe, Villon, Nietzsche, Pascal, P...

Merlin and the grail

Moi

A collection of Valéry’s autobiographical writingsMoi presents a selection of Paul Valéry’s writings that portray his inner life as an artist. Included are several short autobiographical pieces in which Valéry talks about his early childhood, his adolescence, his military experience, his travels,...

Monsieur teste

The National Book Award–winning translation of Valéry’s singular novel, a strange and powerful philosophical exploration of human consciousnessPaul Valéry was obsessed with exploring the conscious mind, and it was this preoccupation that produced the unusual masterpiece of modern fiction that is ...

Occasions

A collection of Valéry’s occasional writingsThis selection of Paul Valéry’s occasional pieces—speeches, interviews, and articles—reveals his life as a public figure in constant demand. Included are his speech upon his reception to the French Academy; his address welcoming Marshal Pétain into the ...

Plays

Valéry’s complete writings for the theaterThis volume gathers all of Paul Valéry’s writings for the theater. It includes My Faust, Valéry’s last major work, which is composed of two unfinished Faust plays, Luste, or the Crystal Girl and The Only One. Plays also presents three allegorical verse pl...

Poems

An authoritative bilingual edition of the great French poetPaul Valéry was one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. This bilingual volume, which features the English translations facing the French texts, demonstrates the wide range of Valéry’s poetry, from lyric masterpieces such...

Sade

The literary adventure of D.A.F. (1740-1814) is unique and paradoxical. He was widely read in the nineteenth century, but his books disappeared almost completely from circulation in the century. Meanwhile the exegesis of Sade poured from the presses of the Western world in a flood of words in wh...

The beauty of light

A lively and spontaneous interview with Etel Adnan about her absolute belief in the beauty of the world and the beauty of art.  In these interviews with journalist and editor Laure Adler, conducted in the months before her death in November 2021, Etel Adnan traces with depth and emotion the found...

The island of happiness

An enchanting selection of Madame d’Aulnoy’s seventeenth-century French fairy tales, interpreted by contemporary visual artist Natalie FrankMarie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville (1650–1705), also known as Madame d’Aulnoy, was a pioneer of the French literary fairy tale. Though d’Aulnoy’s work no...

The mausoleum of lovers: journals 1976-1991

The long-awaited English-language translation of Hervé Guibert’s arresting journals

The medieval romance of alexander

Nigel Bryant's is the first translation of an example of the many medieval romances about Alexander, as popular in their day as those about Arthur.The figure of Alexander the Great haunted the medieval imagination - as much as Arthur, as much as Charlemagne. His story was translated more often in...

The midnight washerwoman and other tales of lower brittany

Twenty-nine Breton tales, as told over a series of long winter nights, featuring an ingenious miller, a Jerusalem-bound ant, a mad dash at midnight, and moreIn the late nineteenth century, the folklorist François-Marie Luzel spent countless winter evenings listening to stories told by his neighbo...

Thousand times broken

Three never-before-translated books from Henri Michaux from the period of his mescaline experimentation, with drawings by the author and Matta.