The Devil's Pool

Sand, George, 1804-1876Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.0

Word count: 211K words
Chapters: 22

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 Devil's Pool by George Sand. Author: Sand, George, 1804-1876. Language: English. Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese. Release Date: Jul 4, 2004

Editor's review

The Devil's Pool is a rural-themed work by the French writer George Sand, published in English through Project Gutenberg. Sand occupies an important place in French Romantic literature, and in her later years she turned to writing about pastoral and country life, seeking a plain yet resilient emotional order among folk customs and ordinary country people. The book centers on rural life, with personal relationships interwoven with local customs, and its narrative carries the flavor of oral tradition and country legend; reading it, one senses the author's closeness to and idealization of the rural world. Its value lies not only in the story itself but in presenting a facet of nineteenth-century French rural writing and showing how a woman writer used pastoral material to express her views on society and human nature. For readers studying French literature, rural narrative, or women's writing, this is a freely available sample of the original text. Since it is an early English translation, the language carries old-fashioned expressions; slow down and treat it as an introductory text for understanding Sand's rural writing, and it reads best alongside background material on French rural society.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in George Sand and French Romantic literature
Those who want to understand nineteenth-century French rural narrative and folk customs
University students studying how women writers handle pastoral and rural themes
Readers willing to broaden their reading of foreign literature through free public-domain resources

Not a good fit for

Readers who read only Chinese translations and will not accept an English original
Contemporary fiction readers who prefer urban themes and strongly conflicted plots
Readers impatient with rural custom description who want a quick read

Reading tips

First learn about the stages of Sand's career and establish that this book belongs to her rural writing before starting the text.
Pay attention to the descriptions of rural customs and the characters' voices, and note them as you go to feel the texture of rural narrative.
Do not struggle over old-fashioned English expressions word by word; grasp the general meaning of a paragraph first, then return to the details.
After finishing, compare the book with material on nineteenth-century French rural society to test its idealizing tendency.

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

How does this book differ from George Sand's better-known works?

Sand's career spans a wide range, including novels on social issues and works that turned to pastoral and country life. This book belongs to the latter, focusing on country people, local customs, and plain emotions rather than urban society or fierce social conflict. It is better suited to observing how Sand used rural material to express her views on human nature.

Is the English translation difficult to read?

This is an early English translation, and its sentence patterns and vocabulary show old-fashioned traces; together with the slower pace of rural material, reading goes more slowly than with contemporary fiction. Readers with experience of long-form English reading can move through it smoothly; beginners should first grasp the general meaning of paragraphs and then work on details, rather than struggling over every word.

Is this book suitable as material for a literature course?

It can serve as supplementary material for courses on French literature or women's writing. Its length and subject suit discussion of the features of rural narrative, the author's idealization of the countryside, and how nineteenth-century women writers chose their subjects. It is best used alongside material on Sand's life and French rural society, not read in isolation.

Related on WeRead

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

Sand, George, 1804-1876 Author

George Sand (1804–1876) was a French novelist. The library holds seventy-six of her works, including volumes one and three of Consuelo, The Devil's Pool, Mauprat, La petite Fadette, and the first part of Histoire de ma Vie, as well as her correspondence with Gustave Flaubert. Because source materials are limited, details of her life and her assigned categories are not fully recorded. Judging from the works available, her writing combines a rural, pastoral atmosphere with social observation, often set against country life and depicting the emotions and fortunes of ordinary people with delicate, sympathetic strokes; her letters record her exchanges and intellectual ties with literary figures of her time. These works hold a place in nineteenth-century French literature.