Zibeline — Volume 1

Philippe de Massa (Alexandre-Philippe Régnier, marquis de Massa)Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.7
Word count
88K words
Chapters
9

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature High SocietyBusiness DecisionsSocial ObservationPortrait GalleryLove EntanglementsLove GameHidden IdentityMoney and DesireWealth StoriesLight Comedy

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.Zibeline — Volume 1 by marquis de Philippe MassaAuthor: Massa, Philippe, marquis de, 1831-1911,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Apr 1, 2003

Editor's review

Zibeline — Volume 1 is the first volume of the novel Zibeline by the French writer Philippe Massa, Marquis de, issued by Project Gutenberg as an English-language electronic edition. As a primary text of nineteenth-century French popular literature, its value lies first in documentary accessibility: readers can engage directly with a work written in the French literary tradition and presented in English translation without depending on scarce print copies. This volume undertakes the establishment of characters and situations, with a narrative pace that carries the expansive quality of serialized fiction, making it suitable for research reading or parallel-language study by readers interested in French literary depictions of social manners. Project Gutenberg's free public-domain status also makes it a text that can be freely cited in digital humanities and translation-studies classrooms. A caveat: this is an English translation released in volumes, so reading the first volume alone leaves the plot unresolved; reading it together with the second volume and with background materials on the author's era in French literature will give a fuller grasp of the work's pleasures and limitations.

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Reading tips

  1. Reading the second volume first and then returning to the first can clarify the role of the opening volume's groundwork.
  2. Keep notes on character relationships while reading to manage the serialized exposition.
  3. Read alongside contemporary French novels and note differences in the depiction of social manners.
  4. For language learning, use a bilingual Chinese-English or French-English comparison and pay attention to translated names and forms of address.

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

FAQ

Is this a complete story or only part of one? This is the first volume of Zibeline, a long work released in volumes, and the plot is not fully resolved here. To read the complete story, you need to read it together with the second volume. Project Gutenberg releases its editions volume by volume, so confirming before reading whether you have both volumes can save you the frustration of stopping halfway.
Is this edition the original French or an English translation? According to Project Gutenberg's record, the language of this edition is English; it is an English translation classified under French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese literatures. The original author is the French writer Philippe Massa, Marquis de. For research requiring the original text, consult the French original separately; for translation or corpus analysis, this English translation is a freely usable public-domain text.
Why is this book available for free? The book is released by Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, founded by Michael Hart in 1971, dedicated to collecting and releasing works in the public domain. This English translation of a nineteenth-century novel can therefore be read and downloaded free of charge and freely cited in classes or research, though users should still cite the source edition.

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About the author

Philippe de Massa (Alexandre-Philippe Régnier, marquis de Massa) Author · French · 1831–1910

Philippe de Massa (1831–1910) was a French writer, composer and playwright born in Paris. He came from a military background, took part in the Italian War and the Franco-Prussian War, and was awarded the Legion of Honour. His novel Zibeline (1892) won the Prix Juy of the Académie française, and he also wrote numerous comedies, operas and ballet librettos. The library holds five of his works, chiefly different volumes and the complete edition of Zibeline, along with a collection of quotes and images drawn from it. Public information is limited; his writing spans fiction and stage scripts, often dealing with high society and social life in a light, dramatic style. The award and multiple editions of Zibeline reflect his modest influence in late nineteenth-century French popular literature and theatre.