The Last Rendezvous
May Armand Blanc
Translated by Brian Stableford
The groundbreaking French feminist journal La Fronde, at its height, had a circulation of 100,000 copies a day, and published the work of many of the period’s best women writers, one of the greatest talents of that enclave being May Armand Blanc (1874-1904), a somewhat mysterious figure who died prematurely.
The current volume gathers together the seventy-six known short stories and prose poems she wrote for the journal, as well as a number of pieces from various other sources.
This superb body of work, presented here for the first time in book form, collected and translated by Brian Stableford, might be seen as a travelogue of amour on the road to hell-the heart-rending compositions of an author who, in her careful and meticulous fashion, was the most extreme and the most relentless of the female Symbolists.
May Armand Blanc was one of the truly distinctive and eloquent voices of her unfortunately-brief era, and although she was crying in a wilderness, her song warranted being heard and appreciated then, and still does.
As love stories go, the two offered here, firmly planted in the field of Decadent Symbolism, are certainly among the most intense in literature, written as they are with a variety of creative energy that was unique to their author.
About the Author
May Armand Blanc (1874-1904), though dying prematurely, was a prolific contributor to many of the journals of her day, most especially the feminist journal La Fronde. Her first novel, Bibelot, appeared in 1899, followed in 1900 by her second, Mila: roman nouveau, and in 1901, by her last, La Maison de Roses. A further novelette, “Ella” was published posthumously in 1909 in the Mercure de France. Daughter of the writer who signed herself Madame Mathilde de Saint-Vidal (1849-1911), Blanc was said to have born a striking resemblance to a portrait of Lord Wharton by Van Dyck.
About the Author
Brian Stableford has been publishing fiction and non-fiction for fifty years. His fiction includes an eighteen-volume series of “tales of the biotech revolution” and a series of half a dozen metaphysical fantasies set in Paris in the 1840s, featuring Edgar Poe’s Auguste Dupin. His most recent non-fiction projects are New Atlantis: A Narrative History of Scientific Romance (Wildside Press, 2016) and The Plurality of Imaginary Worlds: The Evolution of French roman scientifique (Black Coat Press, 2016); in association with the latter he has translated approximately a hundred and fifty volumes of texts not previously available in English, similarly issued by Black Coat Press.
Paperback, 354 pages
Release date: May 25, 2021
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-059-3
Price: US$23.00