Misanthropic Tales

S. Henry Berthoud

Translated by Brian Stableford

Misanthropic Tales, first published in 1831, is the first collection of stories in a genre that was given numerous other titles all equally inappropriate by various practitioners before and after the one that eventually caught on to a greater extent than its rivals: Contes Cruels.

These are stories that set out to oppose the conventions of fiction that encourage embellishments of various sorts, including and especially the contrivance of “happy endings,” deliberately violating the ordinary reader’s hope and expectation that a story will end “well”.

In this, S. Henry Berthoud’ s seminal volume, translated into English for the first time by Brian Stableford, we are offered thirty-four such tales of disenchantment, not so much stories as anti-stories to be enjoyed, in a connoisseur fashion, by discriminating readers possessed of refined taste, who are aware of the essential hypocrisy of the fictional conventions the tales defy and deny.

About the Author
S. Henry Berthoud (1804-1891) was born and raised in Cambrai, but went to Paris in the early 1830s order to join the writers of the Romantic Movement, where he did editorial work on several of Émile de Girardin’s pioneering popular periodicals, including the Musée des Familles. He did important pioneering work in the fields of historical fiction, roman scientifique, fantastic fiction, fiction for children and the popularization of science, as well as the conte cruel. A close friend of Honoré de Balzac, his contribution to the evolution of the Romantic Movement, as a writer and editor, was highly significant and deserves to be far better known.

Paperback, 286 pages. Release date: February 5, 2018
ISBN-13: 978-1-943813-53-7
Price: US$19.50