Early 19th Centry French Novel

ULTRAGOTHA · Apr 7, 2012

I have a scene set in January of 1810 in London where a brother has filched one of his sister's French novels from its secret hiding place and is reading it aloud to their youngest brother as a "French lesson" complete with over-dramatic gestures and falsetto voice. It's meant to be a humorous scene.

I've looked around on the web to find an appropriately garish overblown French novel from the late 18th or early 19th century, preferably in English translation; but my Google-fu has failed.

Does anyone know of an appropriate book? Or even a scene or two?

I'm willing to make it up but I'd rather use a real one.

Thanks!

ios · Apr 7, 2012

ULTRAGOTHA said:
I've looked around on the web to find an appropriately garish overblown French novel from the late 18th or early 19th century, preferably in English translation; but my Google-fu has failed.

Don't know of one offhand, but while I was looking for Regency era fiction, I stumbled across a resource. I'm pretty sure it covers more than just British fiction, and if you click on individual years it will pop up more authors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_years_in_literature

And I found some more French specific ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_literature_of_the_19th_century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th-century_French_literature

Maybe it will give you a starting place.

Jodi

mtrenteseau · Apr 7, 2012

Digging into the links above I found a lot of Romantic writers who were later than your scene (Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas were both under ten years old at the time), but I came across François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil, whose book Victor, a Child of the Forest sounds like it might be a good fit.

My first thought was the set of English novels called the Northanger Gothics - seven Gothic romances written in the late 18th century that were mentioned in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, where the two main female characters discuss their love of such books.

ULTRAGOTHA · Apr 8, 2012

Thanks for the help! I hadn't seen that first wiki link. I shall go off and see if I can find a suitable scene.

If anyone else has an idea, I'm still interested!

Early 19th Centry French Novel

ULTRAGOTHA

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ios

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mtrenteseau

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ULTRAGOTHA

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