The Four Talismans
and Other Stories
Charles Nodier
Translated by Brian Stableford
The Four Talismans and Other Stories is the final volume in a series of collections of the work of Charles Nodier (1780-1844), the great pioneer of the prose fiction of the French Romantic Movement. The stories in the present collection, often fantastic and unashamedly intellectual, mostly appear here for the first time in English, in masterful translations by Brian Stableford.
Among the contents is the bizarre novella “Inès de Las Sierras” (1837), in which, on December 24, 1812, three officers of the Napoleonic army traveling to Barcelona are forced to spend the night in an abandoned castle, where centuries ago a nobleman, Ghismondo de Las Sierras, stabbed his young wife Inés in the excesses of an orgy—but legend has it that every year, on Christmas Eve, Inés returns from the dead to take her revenge.
About the Author: Charles Nodier (1780-1844) was one of the pioneers of French Romantic prose; his salon at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, begun in 1824 and known as Le Cénacle, brought together many of the key figures in the Movement and spun off other cénacles in which it was anchored, including Victor Hugo’s. His best work consists of short stories and novellas.
About the Translator: Brian Stableford (1948-2024) was a British science fiction writer, translator, and literary scholar who published over one hundred and twenty volumes of original fiction and over two hundred volumes of translations. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Brian Craig and Francis Amery. His original fiction includes the Hidden Swan series of novels, which began with Halcyon Drift (1972) and ended with Swan Song (1975), and the novels The Werewolves of London (1990) and The Cassandra Complex (2001). Among his important translations are Monsieur de Phocas by Jean Lorrain and Mephistophela by Catulle Mendès. He furthermore published numerous volumes of nonfiction, which include The Mysteries of Modern Science (1977) and, in four volumes, New Atlantis: A Narrative History of Scientific Romance (2016).
Paperback, 354 pages.
Release date: June 3, 2025
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-169-9
Price: US$26.00