Rapid Tales

François CoppéeProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 240K words
Chapters: 25

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Contes rapides by François CoppéeAuthor: Coppée, François, 1842-1908,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Sep 17, 2005

Editor's review

Contes rapides is a collection of short stories by the French writer François Coppée, released free in the original French by Project Gutenberg. Active in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Coppée is known for clear, brisk storytelling, and this collection embodies the idea of “rapid tales”: brief in length and quick in pace, often completing a scene or a twist within a few pages. For readers who want to encounter nineteenth-century French short fiction in the original, it offers an approachable entry point—without the structural weight of a novel, yet conveying the language habits and narrative pleasures of the period. The electronic edition is easy to search and carry, making it suitable as extensive reading material for language learners and for literature lovers who want to work through one piece at a time in spare moments. Note that this is a public-domain e-book without modern annotations or an introduction, so readers need to fill in background knowledge themselves.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Intermediate and advanced learners of French who want to build reading volume through short original texts
Readers interested in nineteenth-century French literature and the short-story form
Readers who prefer fragmented reading and like to finish one complete story at a time
Teachers who need free public-domain texts for course selection or classroom extensive reading

Not a good fit for

Readers who cannot read French and accept only Chinese translations
Beginners who want detailed annotations, introductions, and author biography analysis
Readers who prefer long continuous narratives and complex character relationships

Reading tips

Read one or two pieces per session, then retell the plot in a few sentences to check comprehension.
Mark unfamiliar words without looking them up first; after reading the whole piece, deal with them together to preserve the story’s rhythm.
Read alongside background material on nineteenth-century French history to help understand the social context of the stories.
Start with the shortest pieces to get used to the language style, then move on to longer ones.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What level of French is needed to read this book?

As original nineteenth-century literary text, the sentence patterns and vocabulary carry period features; intermediate or higher French reading ability is recommended. Beginners can work through it paragraph by paragraph with a dictionary, or try the shortest pieces first before deciding whether to read the whole book.

Does this electronic edition include annotations or a Chinese translation?

This is a public-domain French original e-book released by Project Gutenberg and generally contains no modern annotations, introduction, or translation. For help in understanding, you can use a French dictionary, literary history materials, or find a relevant Chinese translation to read alongside it.

What does the title “Contes rapides” mean?

The title can be literally translated as “rapid tales,” indicating that these short stories are brief and fast-paced in narration. When reading, do not expect complex novel-length development; it is better to appreciate the scenes and twists of each piece independently.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

François Coppée Author · French · 1842–1908

François Coppée (1842–1908) was a French poet, playwright, and novelist, born in Paris in 1842 and died there in 1908. Associated with the Parnassian school, he is best known for his collection of poems on ordinary people's lives, Les Humbles, which earned him the title "the poet of the humble." In 1884 he was elected to the Académie française, and his play Le Passant brought him his first major success. The library holds 11 of his works, including Ten Tales, Contes rapides, Henriette, Promenades et intérieurs, The Lost Child, and the complete A Romance of Youth along with its first two volumes. These works often deal with everyday life and the emotions of ordinary people, written in a delicate, accessible style that combines poetic feeling with realism and reflects his enduring attention to the lower classes. Public information is limited, and further research is needed on the details of his life and the full scope of his writing.