The Child

Vallès, Jules, 1832-1885Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.4

Word count: 473K words
Chapters: 48

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.L'enfant by Jules VallèsAuthor: Vallès, Jules, 1832-1885,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Jan 16, 2005

Editor's review

L'enfant is an autobiographical novel written in French by Jules Vallès, belonging to the French literary tradition of works about childhood and growing up. Its value lies not in a convoluted plot but in the narrator's keen, even painful recollection of his own childhood: family relationships, school life, and the social pressures seen through a boy's eyes are woven together. Vallès's prose is direct and emotional, combining anger at injustice with a longing for freedom and dignity, and the reader can feel an unruly boyish spirit. As a public-domain ebook from Project Gutenberg, it is easy to search and cite, making it suitable both as French reading material and for readers studying nineteenth-century French literature, autobiographical writing, or childhood narrative. There is no need to hurry after the plot; it is better read as a coming-of-age record stitched together from fragmentary memories, noting how the narrator forms judgments about himself and society as he looks back on the past.

Who it's for

A good fit for

French majors or self-learners with intermediate or higher French reading ability
Readers interested in nineteenth-century French literature and autobiographical fiction
Literary scholars studying childhood narrative, coming-of-age themes, or educational experience
Those seeking French reading material from public-domain electronic texts

Not a good fit for

Complete beginners with no French who need a Chinese translation to follow along
Readers who prefer strong plots and fast pacing and dislike memoir-style narration
Those looking only for light entertainment and unwilling to engage with emotional tension

Reading tips

Read one chapter first to get a feel for the narrative voice, then go back and sort out the timeline and character relationships.
Mark unfamiliar expressions as you go and look them up after finishing a section, to avoid constant interruption.
Read alongside concise background material on nineteenth-century French society and education.
After finishing, try to summarize in a few sentences the core conflicts in the narrator's childhood experience.

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

Is this book a novel or the author's autobiography?

Sources list L'enfant as a work by Jules Vallès in the French literature category. It is often regarded as an autobiographical narrative; readers can understand the narrator's childhood experience in relation to the author's historical context, but need not treat every detail as strict factual record.

How difficult is the French, and is it suitable for beginners?

The original is in French, and the narration is emotionally charged and colloquial, with sentences that are not always regular, so it is not very friendly to complete beginners. Readers with intermediate or higher reading ability who can handle long sentences with a dictionary will find it smoother. If your French is weak, you can first read a Chinese translation to grasp the content, then return to selected passages in the original.

What should I keep in mind when reading the electronic edition?

This is a public-domain electronic text released by Project Gutenberg, suitable for searching keywords and taking notes on a computer or e-reader. Because it is an early digitized ebook, some formatting or punctuation may differ from modern editions; when citing, check against the original page or paragraph positions.

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About the author

Vallès, Jules, 1832-1885 Author

Jules Vallès (1832–1885) was a French writer best known for his autobiographical trilogy Jacques Vingtras, of which the two works held in this collection, L’enfant (The Child) and Le bachelier (The Graduate), form part. His writing draws heavily on personal experience, with a blunt, pungent style that often criticizes the educational system and social injustice of the Second Empire, showing sympathy for the poor and the young. Vivid in language and intense in feeling, his works blend reportage with literary imagination and hold a place in the French traditions of realism and autobiographical fiction, inspiring later writers concerned with personal growth and social oppression. Public information about the details of his life is limited, so this note focuses only on the themes and style of his works.