The Beauty and the Beast by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve was first published in 1740 and later abridged and rewritten by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in a better-known version in 1743.The main interests of Mme de Villeneuve's story are two sections, one in which the Beast explains how he came to be transformed and why it was forced to act as he did in regard to the Beauty; and the other in which the fay who contrived his liberation from his curse explains how and for what motives an evil rival placed her in that elaborate necessity. This original account of the...

Arrival in the Stars is a product of the aftermath of the Great War, and it deals directly with one of the widespread psychological effects of the war: a resurgence of interest in spiritualism. It is an extended conte philosophique seriously addressing the question of life after death as it was conceived at the time by scientifically-enthused psychic researchers, and as it bears upon human psychology under stress.

Also included in this volume are eleven stories from Rameau's collection Fantasmagories, which represent one of the more exaggerated developments...

Maurice Magre (1877-1941) was one of the most far-ranging and extravagant French writers of fantastic fiction in the first half of the 20th century, and perhaps the finest of them, because of the fertility and versatility of his imagination and the manner and purpose for which he deployed it.

This volume, the first of a series of twelve dedicated to Magre's works, offers thirteen stories mostly written between 1900 and 1905, that belong to the genre called conte merveilleux, often inadequately translated as "fairy tales," but more accurately rendered as "tales of enchantment,"...

Maurice Magre (1877-1941) was one of the most far-ranging and extravagant French writers of fantastic fiction in the first half of the 20th century, and perhaps the finest of them, because of the fertility and versatility of his imagination and the manner and purpose for which he deployed it.

This volume, the third of a series of twelve dedicated to Magre's works, offers six stories featuring fictitious biographies of sexually voracious women, as well as his classic fantasy novel Priscilla of Alexandria (1925).

Priscilla was a contender for the Goncourt Prize, but the jury...

Maurice Magre (1877-1941) was one of the most far-ranging and extravagant French writers of fantastic fiction in the first half of the 20th century, and perhaps the finest of them, because of the fertility and versatility of his imagination and the manner and purpose for which he deployed it.

This volume, the fourth of a series of twelve dedicated to Magre's works, offers the novella, The Love Life of Messalina (1925), in which the eponymous character is possessed by a version of the god Priapus, and becomes an incarnation of lust, and the novel The Angel of Lust (1926), a violent...