Sapho and Manon Lescaut (The Modern Library of the World's Best Books, ML 85) [Sappho]

319, [5] pp. Two novels translated into English from the original French, with no attributed translator(s), including an introduction to the second by Guy de Maupassant. Alphonse Daudet's Sapho, sometimes called Sappho: Parisian Manners, was originally serialised in L'Echo de Paris in 1884, and is an autobiographical story based on the author's relationship with Marie Rieu. The book inspired a wave of novels with lesbian themes. Manon Lescaut, sometimes known by its full title The Story of the Chevalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut, is a tragic love story about a nobleman and a common woman. The story was first published in 1731 in Amsterdam as the seventh and final volume of Prevost's serial novel Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality. On the novel's first publication, the characters' choices were seen as shockingly immoral: their decision to live together without marriage is the start of a moral decline that also leads to gambling, fraud, theft, and murder. The novel was unusual for depicting Paris's "low life" and for discussing the lovers' money problems in numerical detail: both choices contribute to its realism and its aura of scandal.