Stendhal / Seager, Allan (Translator) / Barr, Roger (Illustrator).

Memoirs of a Tourist. Preface by Allan Seager.

Evanston, Northwester University Press, 1962. 16 cm x 23.5 cm. XIII, 305 pages. With many illustrations. Original hardcover with protective Mylar. Excellent condition with only very minor signs of wear. Considerable underlining by preowner. Otherwise clean inside with solid binding.

“Allan Seager (1906–1968) was a novelist and short-story writer. Seager published more than 80 short stories in publications including Esquire, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Sports Illustrated. E.J. O’Brien, editor of the yearly Best American Short Stories series, once stated that the “apostolic succession of the American short story” ran from Sherwood Anderson to Ernest Hemingway to Seager. Poet and novelist James Dickey credited Seager’s novel Amos Berry as a principal reason that he chose to pursue poetry.

As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, Seager was a member of two national championship swimming teams. He subsequently earned a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, but his studies were interrupted by a bout of tuberculosis. He spent a year “curing” at the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York; his experiences there and in Ann Arbor and Oxford led to the semi-autobiographical short stories published in the collection A Frieze of Girls. Subsequent to his Rhodes Scholarship, Seager worked for Vanity Fair magazine as an assistant editor. He returned to Ann Arbor in 1935, where he taught creative writing at the University of Michigan until 1968.” (Wikipedia)

″This is the first English translation of Stendhal’s fictional account of a tour through France in the reign of Louis-Philippe. This is not only a guide book, but more importantly, it is a theater of opinion for one of the most brilliant and original minds of the nineteenth century. Since Stendhal always had to pretend to be someone else, this book purports to be the memoirs of an ironworks salesman, who, having made his fortune, is about to leave France forever and settle in the colonies. The disguise is thin, however, and on every page the freshness and vigor of Stendhal’s mind bursts through.

Stendhal makes observations on the people, the local customs, the social life, the charm of women; he makes what would now be called psychological and sociological observations, remarks on the cuisine and regional wines, the state of the drama, good fishing sites; in fact, as nearly as you can visit a place verbally you do so with the author of The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma”, for Stendhal is the ideal traveling companion: urbane, witty, and stimulating.” (Publisher)

• Keywords: 19th Century · 19th Century Literature · Catalogue Ten – International Literature · French Literature · French Literature – Rare · Littérature Francaise · Novel · Novelist
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 43938AB

EUR 68,--