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. This book is intended for general readers, Dumas fans, readers and students of the historical novel, and French 19th-century fiction and culture.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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.
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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 Buytenhof, 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 Witt, the brother of the Grand Pensionary of Holland was confined. Read the first page
Front Cover | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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 Buytenhof, 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 Witt, the brother of the Grand Pensionary of Holland was confined. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format: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
Format: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.
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
Format: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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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Now I keep my eyes peeled for black tulips!
I didn't really know how to rate this novel. I have given it 4 stars because I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Roét
Almost as good as The Count of Monte Cristo
Who would have thought that a book about growing tulips could be so exciting? And yet Alexandre Dumas managed to write a compelling page turner based on that very subject. Read more
Published 23 months ago by H. Skinner
Ripping Yarn
There are many parallels between this tale of wrongful imprisonment and its better-known predecessor, The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin Classics). Read more
Published on 8 Oct 2009 by Kenneth F. Mcara
A lively romantic romp across the politics and tulip economy of 17th...
Another ripping yarn from the pen of Alexander Dumas. The book is set against a real political and economic background of the Netherlands of 1672. Read more
Published on 25 May 2009 by Brownbear101
A dated Dumas
I have been an avid reader of Dumas for quite some time, and so when I came across this short, strangely titled book, I was eager to get between its sheets. Read more
Published on 21 Jun 2000
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