The Mysteries of Paris

By Eugene Sue, Carolyn Betensky, Jonathan Loesberg and Peter Brooks

The first new translation in over a century of the brilliant epic novel that inspired Les Misérables
 
Sensational, engrossing, and heartbreaking, The Mysteries of Paris is doubtless one of the most entertaining and influential works to emerge from the nineteenth century. It was one of France’s first serial novels, and for sixteen months, Parisians rushed in droves to the newsstands each week for the latest installment. Eugène Sue’s intricate melodrama unfolds around a Paris where, despite the gulf between them, the fortunes of the rich and poor are inextricably tangled. The suspenseful story of Rodolphe, a magnetic hero of noble heart and shadowy origins, was spun out over 150 issues—garnering wild popularity, influencing political change, and inspiring a raft of successors, including Les Misérables and The Count of Monte Cristo. At long last, this lively translation makes the riveting drama of Sue’s classic available to a new century of readers.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Dec 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781101590522

Reviews for The Mysteries of Paris

[charlie68_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My summer read, at 1300 pages, it took nearly all summer. Lots of digressions on the author's views on poverty, the penal system, and the nature of evil, some of the things he muses about are not out of place in modern times. The more things change the more they stay the same.

[john257hopper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This immensely long early 19th century French novel is by an author little known today but who was described by Victor Hugo as the French Dickens. In describing the lives and activities of a wide variety of strata of Parisian society of the time, this is an accurate description. There are moving descriptions of wretched poverty and the gap between rich and poor, redolent of Dickens. Perhaps more pertinently, this novel is also seen as a precursor of Hugo's Les Miserables, and so it is in structure and multiplicity of characters of various backgrounds. There are some colourful characters, especially the villains, though they lack the grandeur of the leading personalities of Hugo's masterpiece. I haven't quite managed to finish this novel and have stopped reading it some 80% of the way through - though I may be tempted to finish it some day. This definitely should be better known.

[colligan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not Proust!!! Yet, despite it's age (circa 1840), style (trite & melodramatic), and length (over 1300 pages), The Mysteries of Paris is a surprisingly entertaining read. Multiple plots and diverse characters populate this "epic" story. Originally presented in newspaper installments, the book features short chapters with more than a few cliff hangers. A prominent, and ultimately tiring aspect, is the author's overt insertion of his observations and recommendations for social progress. It seems his work and he himself did help bring about needed reform. None-the-less, the work's likely most enduring value is as a historical snapshot of Paris' underbelly of the time.