xv, 224 pages ; 22 cm This book features many of the famous classics of French literature across ten centuries, but also political and philosophical texts, detective novels and science fiction, and much more. Each entry provides a book's historic and cultural context, author background, and key information about the author, and a summary of its content Includes bibliographical references (pages 206-214) and index The song of Roland / Turoldus? -- Tristan and Iseut / Beroul/Thomas -- Lais of Marie De France / Marie de France -- Yvain, or The Knight of the Lion / Chretien de Troyes -- Aucassin and Nicolette -- The romance of the rose / Guillaume de Lorris/Jean de Meun -- The book of the City of Ladies / Christine de Pizan -- The testament / Francois Villon -- The farce of Master Pathelin -- Lyric poetry of the French Renaissance / Clement Marot, Joachim Du Bellay, Pierre de Ronsard -- Pantagruel / Francois Rabelais -- The torments of love / Helisenne de Crenne (Marguerite Briet?) -- Sonnets / Louise Labe -- The Heptameron / Marguerite de Navarre -- On monsters and marvels / Ambroise Pare -- History of a voyage to the land of Brazil / Jean de Lery -- The essays = Les Essais / Michel de Montaigne -- An introduction to the devout life / Francois de Sales -- Discourse on method / Rene Descatates -- The Cid / Pierre Corneille -- The letters of Madame De Sevigne / Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne -- The misanthropist / Moliere (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) -- Fables / Jean de La Fontaine -- Thoughts / Blaise Pascal -- Phaedra / Jean Racine -- Maxims / Francois de La Rochefoucauld -- The Princess Of Cleves / Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne de La Fayette -- Persian letters / Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu -- Manon Lescaut / Antoine-Francois Prevost (Abbe Prevost) -- Letters of a Peruvian woman / Francoise de Graffigny -- Man a machine / Julien Offray de La Mettrie -- Candide / Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet) -- Reveries of the solitary walker / Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- Dangerous liaisons / Pierre-Antoine-Francois Choderlos de Laclos -- The marriage of Figaro / Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais -- Paul and Virginia / Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre -- Justine / Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade) -- The nun / Denis Diderot -- Rene / Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand -- Adolphe / Benjamin Constant -- Ourika / Claire de Kersaint, Duchesse de Duras -- The physiology of taste / Anthelme Brillat-Savarin -- The red and the black / Stendhal (Henri Beyle) -- The hunchback Of Notre-Dame / Victor Hugo -- Don't trifle with love / Alfred de Musset -- Old Goriot / Honore de Balzac -- Democracy In America / Charles Alexis Clerel de Tocqueville -- The Count Of Monte Cristo / Alexandre Dumas -- Carmen / Prosper Merimee -- The devil's pool / George Sand (Amantine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin) -- Madame Bovary / Gustave Flaubert -- The flowers of evil / Charles Baudelaire -- Satanism and witchcraft / Jules Michelet -- Therese Raquin / Emile Zola -- 20,000 leagues under the sea / Jules Verne -- "The drunken boat"/A season in hell / Jean-Nicolas-Arthur Rimbaud -- Short stories / Guy de Maupassant -- Against nature / Joris-Karl (Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans) -- Mister Venus / Rachilde (Marguerite Eymery) -- Tomorrow's eve / Auguste, Comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam -- The journal Of Eugene Delacroix / Eugene Delacroix -- The immoralist / Andre Gide -- In search of lost time: "Combray" / Marcel Proust -- Alcools/Calligrammes / Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky) -- Cheri / Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette -- Therese Desqueyroux / Francois Mauriac -- Nadia / Andre Breton -- Lock 14 / Georges Simenon -- Man's fate / Andre Malraux -- Nausea / Jean-Paul Sartre -- The stranger / Albert Camus -- The Little Prince / Antoine de Saint-Exupery -- Antigone / Jean Anouilh -- The second sex / Simone de Beauvoir -- Black Shack Alley / Joseph Zobel -- Memoirs of Hadrian / Marguerite Yourcenar (Marguerite de Crayencour) -- Black skin white masks / Frantz Fanon -- Waiting for Godot / Samuel Beckett -- The dark child / Camara Laye -- Mythologies / Roland Barthes -- Jealousy = La Jalousie / Alain Robbe-Grillet -- Moderato Cantabile / Marguerite Duras (Marguerite Donnadieu) -- Asterix / Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo -- Rhinoceros = Rhinoceros / Eugene Ionesco -- Trap for Cinderella / Sebastien Japrisot (Jean-Baptiste Rossi) -- Friday / Michel Tournier -- Kamouraska / Anne Hebert -- My life and my films / Jean Renoir -- W, or The memory of childhood / Georges Perec -- Missing person / Patrick Modiano -- So long a letter / Mariama Ba -- The prospector / Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio -- The sand child / Tahar Ben Jelloun -- Crossing the mangrove / Maryse Conde -- Simple passion / Annie Ernaux -- Baroque at dawn / Nicole Brossard -- Fear and trembling / Amelie Nothomb -- Monsieur Ibrahim and the flowers of the Koran / Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt -- Kiffe Kiffe tomorrow / Faiza Guene -- The possibility of an island / Michel Houellebecq -- Afterword: and fifty more