HERE ARE TWO contrasting stories, one about a necklace of pearls, the other about a necklace of diamonds.
Guy de Maupassant’s The Necklace is a story of vanity, of two lives blighted by the loss of a diamond necklace, whilst Isak Dinesen’s The Pearls is a story of love and fear. Both authors in different ways use the symbolism of jewels to illustrate the human condition.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT was born in Dieppe in 1850. Through Gustave Flaubert he met other luminaries of his age, such as Zola, Daudet and Turgenev. His influence on French literature was profound and his writing is of pivotal importance in the historical development of the short story, influencing such writers as Ambrose Bierce, O. Henry and Henry James. The majority of his three hundred short stories and six novels were written between 1880 and 1890, a period in which he also contributed to several Parisian daily newspapers. He died in 1893, at the age of forty-three.
ISAK DINESEN was the nom de plume of Karen Blixen, who was born in Rungsted, Denmark in 1885. She studied art in Copenhagen, Paris and Rome before marrying her cousin Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke in 1914 and moving to Kenya to live on a farm. In 1934 Dinesen made her literary debut with the publication of Seven Gothic Tales. This was followed in 1937 by Out of Africa, an autobiographical account of her life in Kenya, which was later made into a film. She died in 1962 in Denmark.
New ISBN 978 1 906548 02 5
New Cover Illustration 'The Neck' by Man Ray (1929)
This translation of The Necklace is by Jonathan Sturges. The Pearls was written in English.
"Guy de Maupassant was that rare thing - a writer who was successful in his own time, immensely popular, prosperous and feted by society. (...) His ability to portray real people coupled with humour and candid sexuality won readers"
BBC World Service
"(Karen Blixen's) ability to observe with the eye of a painter, to write with the sensibility of a poet"
The New York Times
"Both stories are carefully crafted and compassionate; they are an ideal introduction to two great writers"
The Observer
"Maupassant posseses the three qualities of great French writing, firstly clarity, and then more clarity, and finally clarity"
Anatole France
‘If he was understood and loved from the first it was because the French soul found in him the gifts and qualities that have created its finest achievements. He was understood because he had clarity, simplicity, moderation and strength. He was loved because he possessed a laughing goodness; a profound satire which persists even through tears.’
Emile Zola
"Dinesen's tales are filled with aristocrats, adventure, and magic. She revels in imagination and disdains realism"
Scandinavian Review
"That beautiful writer Karen Blixen"
Ernest Hemingway
