Vol. 1. Memoirs of Mademoiselle de Montpensier (La Grande Mademoiselle).
Translated by P. J. Yarrow with the collaboration of William Brooks.

ISBN 978-1-907322-01-3. Published December 2010.

Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans (1627–1693), the Grande Mademoiselle, began her memoirs when she was exiled from Paris following her involvement in the Fronde, the civil war that threatened to dislodge the young Louis XIV from his throne. Best remembered for her colourful life, her military exploits, and a doomed love affair, Mademoiselle was the daughter of Gaston d’Orléans, Louis XIII’s troublesome brother. Her mother having died, Gaston married again, and her scheming stepmother and three half-sisters became an irritant to someone whose consciousness of her self-worth dominated almost her every waking thought.

Mademoiselle writes well, providing colourful analyses of characters who include Louis XIV, his wife, and his brother Philippe, the two great Cardinals, Christina of Sweden, and, above all, Lauzun, the love of her life until he, too, was found wanting. She often travelled around France, and her impressions of the places she saw and the people she met further enrich her account.

P. J. Yarrow, Emeritus Professor of French in the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, has selected and translated the most important and characteristic sections of Mademoiselle's enormously long text. His translation has been prepared for publication by William Brooks, Professor of French in the University of Bath and Chair of the British Society for Seventeenth-Century French Studies.

"This volume is the first in an exciting series of new editions of classic works translated into English published by the Modern Humanities Research Association ... [T]his is a highly readable translation of an eminently readable memoir ... [It] provides an efficient, clean, easy to read and well-presented edition that will be quite useful for undergraduate teaching."

Jonathan Spangler, H-France Review, 11 (August 2011).

Further Details.

Vol. 2. 'Flesh', by Júlio Ribeiro.
Translated by William Barne.

ISBN 978-1-907322-28-0. Published August 2011.

Julio Ribeiro (1845-1890) was a Brazilian grammarian and writer. Republican, abolitionist and free-thinker, he fell under the influence of the French novelist Émile Zola, the giant of the naturalist movement, and was inspired to write a “naturalist” novel about his own country.

A Carne was published in 1887, months before the final abolition of slavery and only two years before the abolition of the monarchy; it conforms to the naturalist principles of Zola, to whom it is dedicated, both in style and in its social concerns. Although the book depicts some of the brutalities and injustices of slavery and the huge fazendas which covered large areas of the interior of Brazil, the principle social theme of the book is the position of women in society – and associated with this, the theme of sexuality and sexual liberation.

Further Details.

Vol. 3. Wilhelm Raabe: ‘German Moonlight’ / ‘Höxter and Corvey’ / ‘By the Sign of the Wild Man’. Translated by Alison Martin, Erich Lehmann, and Michael Ritterson. Edited by Florian Krobb.

ISBN 978-1-907322-54-9. Spring 2012.

The volume will contain three English translations of prose texts by German author Wilhelm Raabe (1832-1910). Readers willing to engage with Raabe's notoriously unreliable narrators will find his narratives intriguing and disturbing, in English translation perhaps even more accessible than in the German original. The present translations have been produced by three different translators, but all have been revised by Michael Ritterson, the most distinguished current Raabe translator.