StendhalThe Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford World's Classics)

Hypocrisy everywhere! This is a satire of the absurd impulses of youth, in the form of an ambitious small town young Frenchman - of strong personality - who wants to attain money and status in his difficult place.But most importantly, Le Rouge et Le Noir is a great satire of the superficial mess that was French society in the 1830s. Stendhal spared no one: the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, Jacobins, the Church (in its ruling faction) and the Jesuits, the Jansenists, etc etc.This is a sort of epic of a man of his century, of a man trying to navigate the world and constantly being amazed by what he's learning. If it were a modern novel the ending might have been different!At the same time irreverent and psychological, realist and romantic, I have this novel as one of my favorites.

Since the former reviewers have praised the story better than I could, I will limit myself to pointing out that, currently, the prices for the leather bound editions are scandalously low; for future reference I would consider anything under $20/volume to be unusually low for Franklin/Easton Press editions.It's curious how certain famous novels command higher prices than others in these leather bound editions; military history, perhaps because of its obscurity, raises Thucydides and Caesar to great hights, while Machiavelli's Prince can be had reasonably; Hemmingway commands a far higher price than Melville. Mark Twain is cheap. Stendhal's The Red and the Black is, I believe, dramatically undervalued at this time.

Great book.

See description.

I finished reading The Red and The Black few weeks ago.. I couldn't leave the book before reaching the last page. The quality of the book, cover, paper - everything - attracted me and added to the pleasure of reading this great work. However, I would like to see another unabrdiged version too.

Nothing wrong with the book. It wasn't what I thought it was, however, which was an anthology of occurrences in the 19th Century.

There is no translator listed, but the errors abound with negatives being left out of sentences, repetitious words clouding the meaning of many sentences. The choppy translation overall diminishes the reader's ability to sense the beauty of the writing of the original of this book. Should be removed from sale.

This story reminds me of The Seagull by Chekhov because it can be read as a drama or, if you take a step back and laugh at the characters instead of empathizing with them, as a comedy. Chekhov described his depressing play as a comedy.Julien Sorel is a poor young peasant in France. He becomes a tutor for a rich family, so of course he has a love affair with his employer's wife. The next time he works for a rich family it is the virgin daughter he falls in love with. The book is French, don't forget. Similar to romance in Proust, the lady despises Julien for loving her, but falls in love with him when she thinks he loves someone else. The stakes are raised when his earlier lover, the married woman, returns to the story to break up his new relationship. Is it hatred? Is it love? Right here we have to break off because things start happening fast and we can't ruin the ending for you.I like happy endings. I wouldn't compare this one to a Yankee fan watching the Yanks win the World Series. Be prepared to chuck it all and just laugh.

The print was tiny. I have never had a book with such tiny print. The most serious problem, however, was that my copy ended at the end of Chapter 24. The ending seemed very strange. The cause was that my copy only contained 24 of the 42 chapters of the book.