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Argentine

by Antoine-Louis Duclaux, Comte de l’Estoille, writing as “A. de l'Estoille”
adapted by Brian Stableford

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This third and final collection of Comte de L’Estoille’s works features Les Amoureuses, a collection of short prose poems and dramas, including “Gyptis,” a tragedy set within the context of L’Estoille’s pseudohistory of Gaul, and “Marthe” and “Rosalie,” both resentful responses to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. It also contains the more upbeat “Argentine” and “Lemmi Kainen”, both reflective of a burst of interest in Scandinavian mythology among French neo-Romantic writers, borrowing motifs from Hans Christian Andersen.

As an eccentric representative of the literary avant garde, L’Estoille was always perhaps a little too paradoxical, but that is not a bad thing in a Decadent artist. He was a maverick even within that motley maverick school, but for connoisseurs of the unusual, that serves only to make him even more interesting as a writer and as a man.

CONTENTS:
Introduction
Les Amoureuses (1883):
Rhodope
Gyptis
Morgane
Balkis
Hélène
Marthe
Alsa
Meyrin
Rosalie
Tales of the North (1892):
Argentine: A Norwegian Tale
Lemmi Kainen: A Finnish Tale

Cover by Michel Borderie

Published by Black Coat Press in December 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64932022-3

The Brian Stableford Website