A LIST OF REPRESENTATIVE TALES AND SHORT STORIES VIII 1750 TO 1800: Memnon, Voltaire (1750). Tales (in The Rambler), Samuel Johnson (1750-52). Idyllen, S. Gessner (1756–1772). Candide, Voltaire (1758). Rasselas, Samuel Johnson (1759). Contes Moraux, J. F. Marmontel (1761). Jeannot et Colin, Voltaire (1764?). L'Ingénu, Voltaire (1767?). La Princesse de Babylone, Voltaire (1768). Le Diable Amoureux, J. Cazotte (1772). Les Deux Amis de Bourbonne, Denis Diderot (1773). Paul et Virginie, Bernardin de St. Pierre (1786). * Fables, G. P. de Florian (1792). Pauline, Mme. de Staël (1793). Adélaide et Théodore, Mme. de Staël (1795). Mirza, Mme. de Staël (1795). Das Märchen, Goethe (1795). Tales, in Cheap Repository Tracts, Hannah More (1795–98). Tales, Denis Diderot, Jacques le Fataliste (1796). Volksmärchen, J. L. Tieck (1797). Ceci n'est pas un Conte, Denis Diderot (1798). JEANNOT AND COLIN THE great name of Voltaire (1694-1778) is not usually associated with short stories. And yet, with an irony that he himself would have appreciated, his short tales now seem, of all his works, that part that will endure the longest. Jeannot and Colin, the example of his fiction presented in this volume, was probably written in 1764. It is both one of the briefest and one of the most artistic of all Voltaire's fictions. The story with a purpose, as has already been noted, is perhaps the most characteristic form of the short story in the eighteenth century. Take away the moral from Jeannot and Colin, and how much is left? "It may be doubted," says George Saintsbury, "whether any of his works displays his peculiar genius more fully and more characteristically than the short tales in prose which he has left. Every one of them has a moral, political, social, or theological purpose." Among Voltaire's principal tales may be mentioned: Babouc (1746), Zadig (1747?), Memnon (1750), Micromégas (1752?), Candide (1758), Jeannot and Colin (1764?), L'Ingénu (1767?), The Man of Forty Crowns (1768). The dates of many of his writings are uncertain, including those of the four tales queried above. The present version of Jeannot and Colin is that by Robert Bruce Boswell, in the Bohn Library. AUTHORITIES: Voltaire, by John Morley. Life of Voltaire, by James Parton. Life of Voltaire, by F. Espinasse (Great Writers series). |