"Il était déjà une heure du matin ; une pluie morne battait les vitres et ma chandelle presque consumée dispensait une lueur vacillante grâce à laquelle je vis s'ouvrir l'oeil jaune et terne de la créature : elle respirait avec peine et un mouvement convulsif agitait son corps".

Frankenstein

Amori impossibili, vite prematuramente spezzate, affascinanti fuorilegge, fanciulle disperate, sogni divinatori, equivoci, riconoscimenti, vendette, e naturalmente matrimoni, nascite, vittorie. Ha avuto lei stessa una vita avventurosa come un romanzo, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, divenuta poi famosa come Mary Shelley, autrice del celeberrimo Frankenstein o il moderno Prometeo. Il successo di quest'opera straordinaria, composta a soli diciannove anni, ha forse per troppo tempo sovrastato la sua autrice; questa raccolta di racconti permette finalmente di conoscerne il mondo interiore, la vivace intelligenza, l'impressionante talento narrativo. Racconti - alcuni dei quali ambientati in Italia, dove la scrittrice visse per un periodo - apparsi su riviste dell'epoca, in cui si sviluppano vari temi a lei cari: classi sociali e rivoluzione, religione, famiglia, identità personale e nazionale, attraverso storie dalle inconfondibili ambientazioni gotiche e romantiche in cui a farla da padrone è il destino, talvolta crudele, talvolta generoso, ma sempre implacabile.

La tomba senza nome - e altri racconti inediti

Traduction de Hannah Betjeman.  Dossier pédagogique de Cédric Hannedouche. Lors d'un voyage au pôle Nord, Robert Walton vient en aide à Victor Frankenstein. L'homme lui raconte alors son histoire. Passionné de sciences, il a réussi à créer la vie à partir de cadavres. Effrayé par sa propre création, l'homme prend la fuite. Toutefois, le dangereux monstre est prêt à tout pour que le scientifique lui crée une compagne. Écrit par la romancière anglaise Mary Shelley, Frankenstein est le premier roman de science-fiction : un incontournable du genre !   Groupements de textes :  1. Le savant fou en littérature 2. Créatures monstrueuses.

Lionel Verney est le dernier homme. Accablé par la mort de son père, ancien ami du roi d'Angleterre, tombé en disgrâce et réduit à la pauvreté, Verney abandonne sa jeunesse à l'esprit de revanche et à la violence, avec, tendrement enfouie, une lueur d'amour pour sa soeur Perdita. Arrivent dans le voisinage, au château de Windsor, les enfants royaux, Idris et Adrian. Leur rencontre préside au bouleversement de leurs vies, chacun révélant à l'autre sa véritable nature... Puis, survient la terrible nouvelle : la peste a fait son apparition et progresse. Exacerbant passions et sagesse, le fléau met chaque homme en face de son destin.

Le dernier homme

July 16, 1833.--This is a memorable anniversary for me; on it I complete my three hundred and twenty-third year!

The Wandering Jew?--certainly not. More than eighteen centuries have passed over his head. In comparison with him, I am a very young Immortal.

Am I, then, immortal? This is a question which I have asked myself, by day and night, for now three hundred and three years, and yet cannot answer it. I detected a grey hair amidst my brown locks this very day--that surely signifies decay. Yet it may have remained concealed there for three hundred years--for some persons have become entirely white-headed before twenty years of age.

I will tell my story, and my reader shall judge for me. I will tell my story, and so contrive to pass some few hours of a long eternity, become so wearisome to me. For ever! Can it be? to live for ever! I have heard of enchantments, in which the victims were plunged into a deep sleep, to wake, after a hundred years, as fresh as ever: I have heard of the Seven Sleepers--thus to be immortal would not be so burthensome: but, oh! the weight of never-ending time--the tedious passage of the still-succeeding hours! How happy was the fabled Nourjahad!--But to my task.

Mary Shelley's short stories

Au mois de juin 1816, sur les rives du lac de Genève, Mary Shelley et ses amis cherchent à tromper l'ennui dans le chalet où la pluie les contraint à rester enfermés. Jeux de société, romans "terrifiants" à la mode, tout y passe, jusqu'à ce que Lord Byron leur suggère d'écrire, à leur tour, une "histoire de fantômes". Ainsi naquit Frankenstein, le récit d'un savant trop audacieux, incapable de maîtriser le monstre qu'il avait créé. Traduit dans des dizaines de langues, adapté plus de quarante fois au cinéma, ce roman écrit par une jeune fille de dix-neuf ans allait connaître un succès mondial. A l'instar de Don Juan et de Faust, le "hideux rejeton" de Mary Shelley s'est hissé au rang de mythe, donnant ainsi à la littérature d'épouvante ses lettres de noblesse.

Frankenstein - Ou le Prométhée moderne

In the flattest and least agreeable part of the county of Essex, about five miles from the sea, is situated a village or small town, which may be known in these pages by the name of Longfield. Longfield is distant eight miles from any market town, but the simple inhabitants, limiting their desires to their means of satisfying them, are scarcely aware of the kind of desert in which they are placed. Although only fifty miles from London, few among them have ever seen the metropolis. Some claim that distinction from having visited cousins in Lothbury and viewed the lions in the tower. There is a mansion belonging to a wealthy nobleman within four miles, never inhabited, except when a parliamentary election is going forward. No one of any pretension to consequence resided in this secluded nook, except the honourable Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry; she ought to have been the shining star of the place, and she was only its better angel. Benevolent, gentle, and unassuming, this fair sprig of nobility had lived from youth to age in the abode of her forefathers, making a part of this busy world, only through the kindliness of her disposition, and her constant affection for one who was far away.

Lodore

THE other nations of Europe were yet immersed in barbarism, when Italy, where the light of civilization had never been wholly eclipsed, began to emerge from the darkness of the ruin of the Western Empire, and to catch from the East the returning rays of literature and science. At the beginning of the fourteenth century Dante had already given a permanent form to the language which was the offspring of this revolution; he was personally engaged in those political struggles, in which the elements of the good and evil that have since assumed a more permanent form were contending; his disappointment and exile gave him leisure to meditate, and produced his Divina Comedia.

Lombardy and Tuscany, the most civilized districts of Italy, exhibited astonishing specimens of human genius; but at the same time they were torn to pieces by domestic faction, and almost destroyed by the fury of civil wars. The ancient quarrels of the Guelphs and the Ghibelines were started with renovated zeal, under the new distinctions of Bianchi and Neri. The Ghibelines and the Bianchi were the friends of the emperor, asserting the supremacy and universality of his sway over all other dominion, ecclesiastical or civil: the Guelphs and the Neri were the partizans of liberty. Florence was at the head of the Guelphs, and employed, as they were employed by it in their turn, the Papal power as a pretext and an instrument.

Valperga

"Frankenstein" is a novel written by Mary Shelley, published in 1818 by a small London publishing house, Lackington, Hughes, Harding. Mary Shelley was nineteen when she wrote the novel, following "late in the night" literary games with her lover and future husband Percy Shelley and Lord Byron at the latter's residence near Lake Geneva during the summer of "the year without summer" (the consequence of the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora) . "Frankenstein" is a gothic novel with romantic overtones whose creature became more famous than its author. Discover Frankenstein with an original preface and biography in this new edition by Les Éditions de Londres.

Frankenstein

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