Books in the Dedalus European Classics series

Courage is one of most indomitable women in European literature and a feminist icon for our times. The Life of Courage (first published in 1670), one episode from whose life Brecht used as the basis for his Mother Courage, is the female counterpart to Simplicissimus. A young girl caught up in the turmoil of the Thirty Years War, she survives, even prospers, by the use of her native cunning and sexual attraction. Completely amoral, she flits from man to man, having a succession of husbands and lovers, and ends her life with a band of gypsies. Courage supposedly tells her story to get her own back on Simplicissimus, who treats her rather dismissively in his memoirs. Her method is to reveal the truth about herself, including the fact that she was recovering from the pox at the time of their affair, so that he will be tarred with the same brush. The result is a lively account of lechery, knavery and trickery told with disarming frankness and a complete lack of remorse. It will appeal to anyone who likes a rollicking good yarn and a bit of knavery in their reading.

George Sand's fictionalised account of her notorious affair with the poet Alfred de Musset caused a sensation on its publication two years after his death, in 1859. It also prompted a volley of claim and counter-claim: two more novels rapidly appeared in the following months, Lui Et Elle, by Musset's brother, defending his reputation; and Lui, by Louise Colet, Flaubert's former mistress and briefly Musset's. Then the journalists and commentators of the day joined in, with Eux, by Gaston Lavalley, and Eux Et Elles, by Adolphe de Lescure, satirising the whole sordid business.

The stories in The Angels of Perversity are key examples of early Symbolist prose shaped and inspired by the French Decadent consciousness and must rank among the best short stories of the 1890s.The tone of the stories is unique, with an unusual mixture of decadence and eroticism, balanced by an ironic and sentimental view of the world. "Anatole France called Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) the 'greatest living French writer'. The stories Francis Amery has collected and translated under the not inappropriate title The Angels of Perversity are from the first half of Gourmont's career, when, as a writer of short fictions he established himself as a significant figure in the Symbolist movement." --Adrian Tahourdin in The Times Literary Supplement

A novel about obsessive love initially published in France in 1898. Has inspired five film adaptations, including Josef von Sternberg's in 1935 and Luis Bunuel's in 1977.

First published on the eve of the First World War, Keyserling's masterpiece offers a vivid portrait of a society on the verge of dissolution. A group of German aristocrats gathers at a seaside village on the Baltic Sea for a summer holiday in the early years of the twentieth century. The characters represent a cross-section of the upper classes of imperial Germany: a philandering baron, his jealous wife, a gallant cavalry officer, the elderly widow of a general, a cynical government official, a lady's companion. Their lives, even on holiday, are regulated by rigid protocol and archaic codes of honour. But their quiet, disciplined world is thrown into disarray by the unexpected presence of Doralice, a young countess who has rebelled against social constraints by escaping from an arranged marriage and running away with a bourgeois artist.

Toomas Nipernaadi is one of the more peculiar works in the Estonian literary canon, and its eponymous male protagonist is without doubt one of the most exciting characters in the language. First of all he seems merely to be a man who travels from place to place charming people and telling stories, only to forget it all in the blink of an eye. But perhaps, more than anybody, it is precisely he who remembers. Perhaps all the hearts he touches will remain dear to him. The idea of Toomas Nipernaadi is said to have come to Gailit when he heard a man's echoing footsteps in a Berlin theatre, and those who wish to will hear this sound in the text of his novel. In many ways the protagonist can be seen as the writer's alter ego. Those close to Gailit knew that beneath his self-confidence and brio, a tender and melancholy soul was hiding, which the reader will no doubt be able to recognise in Toomas Nipernaadi. Since it was first published in 1928, the book has conquered one heart after another, and it will charm many coming generations. Besides other things, it captures the dream-like summer of Estonia: brief yet eternally recurring.

The Continuation is Grimmelshausen's 'pilgrim's progress', the concluding chapter in one of the greatest and most acclaimed German novels. It combines fantastic episodes with a realistic narrative style. At the end of his original adventures his hero withdraws from the world to live as a hermit in the Black Forest. Now, after a vivid dream of the Devil and all his minions at work, he decides to become a pilgrim and visit the holy places, making his way, with various encounters, across Switzerland to Italy, where he takes passage on a ship to Egypt. Outside Cairo he is captured by Arab robbers who take him to the Red Sea, exhibiting him as a wild man from the desert. Rescued by European merchants, he embarks on a ship to return home via the Cape of Good Hope, but the ship is wrecked and, 50 years before Robinson Crusoe, he is marooned on a desert island.

Mike Mitchell's new translation replaces S. Goodrich's 1912 version of the first German bestselling novel. Simplicissimus is the eternal innocent, caught in the middle of the Thirty Years War. The novel follows a boy from the Spessart named Simplicius in the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years War as he grows up in the depraved environment and joins the armies of both warring sides, switching allegiances several times. Born to an illiterate peasant family, he is separated from his home by foraging dragoons and is eventually adopted by a forest hermit. He is conscripted at a young age into service, and from there embarks on years of foraging, military triumph, wealth, prostitution, disease, travels to Russia, and countless other adventures.

A classic Portuguese novel translated here into English by Margaret Jull Costa. Follows the fortunes of widower Richard Whitestone who regularly re-reads "Tristram Shandy", his wise daughter and romantic son.

The first English translation of Huysmans' seminal art book, analysing work by a range of key figures including Paul Gauguin, Mary Cassatt and Edouard Manet.

''''The greatest book by Portugal''s greatest novelist.'' Jose Saramago. The Maias is part of Dedalus'' project to make all of Eca de Queiroz'' major works available in English. Margaret Jull Costa''s translation of The Maias won both The Pen and The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prizes. According to Publishers Weekly, ''This novel stands with the great achievements of fiction.''

Some of Grabinski's best stories, including a watchmaker whose death stops all the town clocks, and a phantom train that always turns up unannounced.