The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 5 of 6

Sue, Eugène, 1804-1857Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.6
Word count
445K words
Chapters
45

Tags

English Originals Social FictionMystery and Suspense Suspense ThrillerUrban UnderworldPortrait GalleryFate and FortuneComplex HumanitySocial Critique

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 Mysteries of Paris, Volume 5 of 6 by Eugène SueAuthor: Sue, Eugène, 1804-1857,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Sep 22, 2010

Editor's review

This volume is the fifth of six in Eugène Sue's long serial novel The Mysteries of Paris, continuing the characters' fates and the social panorama laid out in the first four volumes and bringing the story into the key phase before its conclusion. A representative nineteenth-century French serial novel, it presents a broad picture of Parisian lowlife and high society interwoven, treating themes of wealth and poverty, crime and punishment, and redemption; the plot advances through suspense and coincidence, characters are clearly divided into good and evil, and the work has a distinct popular narrative appeal. This volume suits readers who have finished the first four volumes and wish to see how the story moves toward its ending, and also readers studying the serial novel form, urban writing, or nineteenth-century French social imagination, who may use it as a textual segment. Note that this volume is not a standalone work; read alone, its many character threads make it hard to enter. At the same time, the work carries the limitations of its era, and some ideas and expressions should be viewed with historical perspective. As a public-domain electronic text, it is convenient to read and suitable for use alongside a paper or scholarly edition.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the first four volumes first and briefly sort out the character relationships before starting this volume, to avoid confusion over the threads
  2. Read in chapters, reviewing the main characters' changing circumstances after each section
  3. Use a map or historical background material to understand the class contrasts in the book's Parisian spaces
  4. After finishing, read on with the sixth volume to grasp the whole work's conclusion and thematic landing

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
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45

FAQ

Can this fifth volume be read on its own? It is not recommended to read it on its own. This volume is the fifth part of a six-volume novel, and the character threads and suspense continue from earlier text; without the groundwork of the first four volumes, it is hard to understand the relationships and the causes and effects of events. If you only want an overview of the work, read a summary or research material first, then decide whether to read the whole.
What kind of publication is this edition? This is a public-domain electronic text released by Project Gutenberg, in English, and is a free eBook. It is easy to search and carry, but usually contains no modern scholarly notes, introduction, or detailed publication information; it is suitable for reading the original text or for use alongside a scholarly edition.
What period limitations should I keep in mind while reading? The work was written in the nineteenth century, and its treatment of social class, crime, gender, and similar issues reflects the ideas of its time; some descriptions may seem exaggerated or stereotyped. It is best understood in historical context, as material for observing the social imagination and popular literary production of the period, rather than as a direct reference for modern values.

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

Sue, Eugène, 1804-1857 Author

Eugène Sue (1804–1857) was a French novelist best known for his serial novels. His masterpiece Les mystères de Paris (The Mysteries of Paris) is set among the poor of Paris and depicts the extremes of wealth and poverty and the darker side of urban life, causing a great sensation in the mid-nineteenth century; his other series, Les mystères du peuple (The Mysteries of the People), uses historical narrative to express social criticism. The library holds sixty-six of his works, mostly volumes and English translations of these two series, showing that he wrote chiefly long serial fiction focused on social issues and historical legend. Public information is limited, so details of his life cannot be expanded here, but his works reveal a talent for presenting social reality in a popular, dramatic style that influenced later social novels and serial literature.