Complete Early Poetry

Auguste de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam

Translated by Richard Robinson

Auguste de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (1838-1889), though best known for his contes cruels and his proto science fiction novel L’Ève future, began his career with two volumes of verse, Deux essais de poésie (1858) and Premières poésies (1859), the contents of which are here presented in their entirety as “Complete Early Poetry”, translated for the first time into English, by Richard Robinson.

Under the spell of Baudelaire and Leconte de Lisle, the young author produced these early exemplars of Decadent verse, which are filled with exoticism, nocturnal fantasies, and mystery. “Complete Early Poetry” offers further insight into one of the most interesting and eccentric of the French Symbolists.

About the Author
Auguste de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (1838-1889) inherited delusions of aristocracy from his father, who claimed, on highly dubious grounds, to be entitled to call himself Villiers de l’Isle-Adam and spent much of his life searching for the non-existent buried treasure of the Knights of Malta. He carried the imposture with him throughout his life, taking it with him into absurdity and abject poverty, but it doubtless helped to shore up his conviction that he was also a literary genius—which was, in fact, true, although the disorganization of his life limited the manifestations of the genius in question, the most important of which are the dramas Le Nouveau Monde (1880), Axël (published posthumously in 1890), the short story collection Contes cruels (1883), and the novel L’Ève future (1886). As is not unusual with literary geniuses, he received almost no reward while he was alive—hence the abject poverty—but he became world famous almost as soon as he was dead.

About the Translator
Richard Robinson has done numerous translations over the years, both to and from English, including Georges Bataille’s The Trial of Gilles de Rais (Amok Books, 1990), Léon Bloy’s The Desperate Man (Snuggly Books, 2020), and Paul Alexis’ The End of Lucie ­Pellegrin. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the California State University.

Paperback, 190 pages
Release date, August 3, 2021
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-074-6
USA: $18.00