Selections from Saint-Simon
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- History students of court politics and aristocratic culture in the French ancien régime
- Literary readers interested in the memoir form and in character portraiture
- French learners with some reading ability who want to engage with the original text
- Collectors of public-domain e-books from Project Gutenberg
Not a good fit for
- Beginners with no French who do not intend to use a translation
- Readers seeking a systematic general history rather than selected fragments
- Readers who prefer light, plot-driven reading and have no patience for long sentences and allusions
Reading tips
- Begin with the character portraits in the selection, then return to the corresponding historical background to lower the barrier to understanding.
- Keep pen and paper to mark recurring names and family relationships, so the threads do not become confused.
- Those with limited French can read paragraph by paragraph against a Chinese or English translation.
- Read only one or two pieces at a time, then briefly summarize each character's personality and the events to check comprehension.
About the publisher
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
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FAQ
Is this book the complete Saint-Simon memoirs?
Can I read this book without knowing French?
What historical background should I know before reading?
Comments
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About the author
Saint-Simon (Louis de Rouvroy, duc de, 1675–1755) was a French nobleman and memoirist, best known for his Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency. The collection holds 18 of his works, chiefly the complete memoirs and their individual volumes. Writing as an eyewitness, he records the political intrigues, personalities, and ceremonial details of Louis XIV's later court and the Regency, with a sharp, opinionated pen that combines historical value with literary flair. Public information about his life is limited, but this voluminous memoir alone secures him a distinctive place in French historical writing and the memoir tradition, offering later readers a vivid, highly personal testimony to the court society of the ancien régime.
