- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks; New edition edition (1 Jun 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0192837508
- ISBN-13: 978-0192837509
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 917,487 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Black Tulip (Oxford World's Classics)
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Product Description
Product Description
Alexandre Dumas's novels are notable for their suspense and excitement, their foul deeds, hairsbreadth escapes, and glorious victories. In The Black Tulip (1850), the shortest of Dumas's most famous tales, the real hero is no Musketeer, but a flower. The novel - a deceptively simple story - is set in Holland in 1672, and weaves the historical events surrounding the brutal murder of John de Witte and his brother Cornelius into a tale of romantic love. The novel is also a timeless political allegory in which Dumas, drawing on the violence and crimes of history, makes his case against tyranny and puts all his energies into creating a symbol of justice and tolerance: the fateful tulipa negra. This new edition reprints the first, classic English translation. David Coward sets the novel in the context of its author's life, the turbulent history of the Dutch Republic, and the amazing `tulipmania' of the seventeenth century which brought wealth to some and ruin to many.
About the Author
Alexandre Dumas (1824-95) was a pioneer of the Romantic theatre in France, for which he wrote a series of colourful historical dramas, although it is as a novelist that he is best known today. His works include The Three Musketeers (1844-5), La Reine Margot (1845) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-5).
Robin Buss is a journalist and translator. For Penguin, his translations include works by Sartre, Zola and, most recently, The Plague by Camus.
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
ON THE 20th of August, 1672, the city of the Hague, always so lively, so neat, and so trim, that one might believe every day to be Sunday; with its shady park, with its tall trees, spreading over its Gothic houses; with its canals like large mirrors, in which its steeples and its almost Eastern cupolas are reflected; the city of the Hague, the capital of the seven United Provinces, was swelling in all its arteries with a black and red stream of hurried, panting, and restless citizens, who, with their knives in their girdles, muskets on their shoulders, or sticks in their hands, were pushing on to the Buitenhof, a terrible prison, the grated windows of which are still shown, where, on the charge of attempted murder, preferred against him by the surgeon Tyckelaer, Cornelius De Witte, the brother of the Grand Pensionary of Holland, was confined. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
ON THE 20th of August, 1672, the city of the Hague, always so lively, so neat, and so trim, that one might believe every day to be Sunday; with its shady park, with its tall trees, spreading over its Gothic houses; with its canals like large mirrors, in which its steeples and its almost Eastern cupolas are reflected; the city of the Hague, the capital of the seven United Provinces, was swelling in all its arteries with a black and red stream of hurried, panting, and restless citizens, who, with their knives in their girdles, muskets on their shoulders, or sticks in their hands, were pushing on to the Buitenhof, a terrible prison, the grated windows of which are still shown, where, on the charge of attempted murder, preferred against him by the surgeon Tyckelaer, Cornelius De Witte, the brother of the Grand Pensionary of Holland, was confined. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dumas on a smaller scale,
This review is from: The Black Tulip (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)
While most of Dumas works travel around a variety of places this book spends most of its time in Holland, a very different place to the France of his other works. The charm this book has for me is that it is typical Dumas in the style of writing and in the detail with which he describes scenes, but it is on a smaller scale then most of his works enabling him to spend a little more time on some of the details. It does share certain plot elements with the Count of Monte Cristo but by centering the story around an obsession with tullips it lends an eccentricity to the story which makes it an easy and pleasant read. I would recommend this to any Dumas fans and indeed to anyone who reads widely.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dumas is indeed the master story teller!,
By
This review is from: The Black Tulip (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)
Who would have thought that a book, with a simple plot about two rivals trying racing to be the first to grow a black tulip, could be so unputdownable? There are no lords and ladies, no swashbuckling heros, no evil cardinals or Miladys -- nothing but a darn good yarn, and a very sweet love story.
Dumas is just brilliant (as always) and his dialogue (as always) is among the finest I've ever come across. A very quick, albeit enjoyable, read. Highly recommended.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping read,
This review is from: The Black Tulip (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
This is a very good translation of the full story with excellent notes to explain the more obscure references - or the references to the classics if these too are unfamiliar. The book is surprisingly fast and gripping. The characters are fully formed with insight into their motivations and actions revealed at just the right time. A beautifully told story - with many memorable phrases. A must for your bookshelf to read again and again.
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