The Countess of Charny or, The Execution of King Louis XVI

Dumas, Alexandre, 1802-1870Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.6
Word count
383K words
Chapters
39

Tags

English Originals Historical Fiction Legendary LivesFate and FortunePower GameGroup BiographyComplex HumanityWestern ThoughtPopular NarrativeTurbulent Era19th Century

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.The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI by Alexandre DumasAuthor: Dumas, Alexandre, 1802-1870,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: May 21, 2013

Editor's review

This work is Dumas’s historical novel set against the French Revolution, centering on the Countess of Charny and the court and popular turmoil surrounding the execution of Louis XVI. As a public-domain e-book, its first value is as a classic text freely available: readers can encounter directly the rhythm and dramatic manner of nineteenth-century French popular historical narrative and observe how Dumas wove real historical figures together with invented plot. Its depiction of political tension, court crisis and interwoven personal fates during the Revolution makes it a useful introduction to the narrative tradition of the Revolution, and also suitable for textual analysis by readers studying how historical fiction is written. Read it within the context of Dumas’s series, noting character relationships and the chronology of historical events; since this is a public-domain English translation, the typography and notes may be plain, so a basic chronology of the Revolution will help clarify the background.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read a brief chronology of the French Revolution first; characters and events will then be clearer.
  2. Read the Countess of Charny episodes alongside historical accounts, noting the boundary between fiction and fact.
  3. If the English is hard, read a Chinese translation for the plot first, then return to the public-domain English text for its style.
  4. After finishing, trace the main characters’ shifts of allegiance and write a short note to digest the complex historical background.

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.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39

FAQ

Is this a complete novel or an excerpt? Sources indicate that this is the public-domain electronic text of Dumas’s The Countess of Charny, a complete work rather than an excerpt. It narrates the period around the execution of Louis XVI; the specific chapters and layout depend on the electronic edition obtained.
Can I read it without background knowledge of the French Revolution? Yes, but first learn the basic timeline of Louis XVI, the outbreak of the Revolution and the execution. Characters and historical events are interwoven, and without background it is easy to confuse fictional characters with real figures; a brief chronology makes reading much smoother.
Why does the recommendation stress that it is a public-domain e-book? Because sources show it was released by Project Gutenberg as a freely available public-domain electronic text. Readers can thus access a classic at low cost, but the typography, annotation and translation quality depend on that edition and should not be judged by the standards of a scholarly critical edition.

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

Dumas, Alexandre, 1802-1870 Author

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) was a major French novelist and playwright of the nineteenth century. The collection here holds 133 of his works, including editions in several languages, which shows how widely they have circulated. His best-known works include The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, the latter often published in volumes such as Volume III, Volume II, Volume I, and Volume IV. His writing is usually set against historical backgrounds, with intricate plots and vivid characters, and he was skilled at unfolding grand narratives in serial form, combining adventure, rivalry, and legend. Both novels have been translated into many languages and frequently issued in illustrated editions, leaving a lasting influence on popular literature and on film and television adaptations. Public information is limited, so details of his life and critical assessments are not developed here; readers may discover his narrative appeal through the works themselves.