The Devil's Hill cover

The Devil's Hill

Rating 3.1
Word count
685K words
Chapters
69

Tags

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.Le morne au diable by Eug鑞e SueAuthor: Sue, Eug鑞e, 1804-1857,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Dec 29, 2011

Editor's review

This work comes from the nineteenth-century French popular novelist Eugène Sue and belongs to his narratives grounded in Breton folklore and local color. The Project Gutenberg French original e-text preserves the work's language, making it suitable as an entry point to nineteenth-century French narrative literature. Its value lies not in thrilling plot but in showing how popular literature handled the interweaving of rural supernatural tales, local beliefs, and human good and evil, offering reference for understanding the thematic interests of late French Romantic popular fiction. Read it as both literary-historical material and a language sample: feel the rhythm of old French prose and observe how the author transcribed oral legends into written stories. Suitable for slow reading in a quiet setting with dictionary tools for unfamiliar words; do not rush.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • French majors needing nineteenth-century French narrative texts for extracurricular reading
  • Readers interested in Breton local legends and folklore
  • Literature enthusiasts studying Eugène Sue and the history of French popular fiction
  • Self-learners wanting to encounter original French works through public-domain e-books

Not a good fit for

  • General readers with no French who rely on Chinese translations
  • Casual readers expecting fast-paced suspense plots
  • Researchers needing heavily annotated scholarly editions with full introductions

Reading tips

  1. First read through without looking up words to grasp the plot and narrative tone, then return to close-read difficult passages.
  2. Prepare a French dictionary or electronic lookup tool; mark recurring old-fashioned expressions and dialect-colored vocabulary.
  3. Read alongside materials on Breton geography and folklore to understand the story's local background.
  4. Advance a fixed number of pages daily; after finishing, write a brief summary of plot and character relationships.

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
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or the original French?
This is the French original e-text released by Project Gutenberg, in French with no Chinese translation; reading requires some French reading ability.
What French level is needed to read it?
The text is from the nineteenth century, with period syntax and vocabulary. Intermediate or higher French reading ability and skilled use of dictionary tools are recommended; otherwise long sentences and local expressions will be obstacles.
Why recommend reading this public-domain book?
It is free, legal, and easy to obtain, and preserves the original language. It is a low-cost entry to Eugène Sue's popular fiction style and French local legends, and convenient for close-reading practice.
Do I need to know the author before reading?
Systematic study of the author is not necessary, but knowing that Eugène Sue was a nineteenth-century French popular novelist helps understand the work's orientation toward a mass readership; background can be added afterward.

Comments

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About the 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.

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