Sylvie: souvenirs du Valois is a melancholic novella about the hero's love for three different women. This poetic and sentimental novel is a testament to unattainable love. Excerpt: "One of Mr. Andrew Lang's most genuine appreciations occurs in an epistle addressed to Miss Girton, Cambridge; where, for the benefit of that mythical young person, he translates a few passages out of Sylvie, and favors us with a specimen of Gérard's verse."

More than just an account of his travels in Cairo, Beirut, and Constantinople in 1842, Gerard de Nerval's "Journey to the Orient" is a quest for the unknown. If his narrator seems credulous in his retelling of legends of the origins of the pyramids and the mysteries of the Druzes, it is with this purpose in mind. While the Orientalists of his day were confident of having, in the words of Edward Said, "grasped, appropriated, reduced, and codified" the Orient, Nerval's Orient remains elusive, impossible to grasp. Poignantly dramatized in the thematic centerpieces of the tales of the Queen of Sheba and the Caliph Hakim, what takes shape in this visionary travelogue, as the author's hopes are alternately disappointed and rapturously renewed, is the story of the artist's search for the ideal.

"Published with the support of the Philemon Foundation. This book is part of the Philemon Series of the Philemon Foundation."--Title page.

First published as a sprawling feuilleton in the newspaper Le National in 1850, The Salt Smugglers was political and topical. With nods to Diderot and Sterne, this protean, digressive satire deals less with contraband salt and more with questions of subversion, transgression, censorship and marginality. Never-before-translated into English and never published as a free-standing volume, The Salt Smugglers is an unearthed pre-postmodern gem.

Poetry. Illustrated by Douglas Kinsey. Translated by Henry Weinfield. The lovely Chimeras by GÃ(c)rard de Nerval (1808-1855), musical and mystical jewels and among the most refined and rarified verse pieces in French poetry, present a daunting challenge to the reader and a formidable challenge to the translator. As a writer himself of refined and elegant verse poetry, a critic and scholar of French literature and of Western literature in general, Weinfield brings to bear, in this undertaking, the indispensable constellation of art, skill, and knowledge, and the resulting translations capture fully the evocative power and mystical beauty of Nerval's poems. This is both an impressive accomplishment and a tremendous service to the Anglophone reader.â Alain Toumayan