The Red and the Black

STENDHAL (Henri Beyle) was born on 23 January 1783 in Grenoble, where
his father was a lawyer and his maternal grandfather a doctor. He
lost his mother at the age of 7. After distinguishing himself in
mathematics at the Ecole Centrale in Grenoble, he moved to Paris in
1799 intending to study for admission to the Ecole Polytechnique, but
preferred to make his début in the world of art and literature. He was
employed at the Ministry of War, and took part in the Napoleonic
campaigns in Italy, Germany, Austria, and Russia from 1800 to 1814. At
the fall of the Empire he settled in Milan, where he began to write
on painting and music. Returning to Paris in 1821, he lived as a dandy
in high society, publishing a treatise on love in 1822, his first
novel
Armance
in 1827, followed by
Le Rouge et le Noir
in 1830.

The last phase of his career was spent as a diplomat in Italy, with
postings as Consul in Trieste and then Civitavecchia. He was awarded
the Légion d'honneur in 1835. The
Chartreuse de Parme
, a novel
of military and romantic adventure set in Italy, appeared in 1839.
Stendhal died of a stroke in 1842 during a period of leave in Paris.
His remaining fictional and autobiographical works were published
posthumously. His literary achievement went largely unrecognized
during his lifetime, and it was left to later generations to
appreciate his penetrating psychological and social insights and his
ironical humour.

CATHERINE SLATER was
Fellow and Tutor in French Language and Linguistics at Lady Margaret
Hall, Oxford from 1971 to 1987, and is now an Honorary Research
Fellow. She works in Bristol at HewlettPackard's European research
laboratories.

ROGER PEARSON is a Fellow and Praelector in French at The Queen's College, Oxford, and the author of
Stendhal's Violin: a Novelist and his Reader
( Clarendon Press, 1988). He has also edited Stendhal
The Charterhouse of Parma
for Oxford World's Classics.

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Translation and Notes © Catherine Slater 1991 Introduction, Further reading, and Chronology © Roger Pearson 1991

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published as a World's Classics paperback 1991 Reissued as an Oxford World's Classics paperback 1998

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Stendhal, 1783-1842. [Rouge et le noir. English]

The red and black: a chronicle of the nineteenth century / Stendhal;
translated by Catherine Slater, with an introduction by Roger Pearson.

p. cm.--(Oxford world's classics)
Translation of: Le rouge et le noir
Includes bibliographical references.

I. Slater, Catherine. II. Pearson, Roger III. Title. IV. Series. [PQ2435.R7E5 1991] 843′.7 dc20 90-47949

ISBN 0-19-283871 7

5 7 9 10 8 6 4

Printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd. Reading, Berkshire

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