Paul et Virginie. English

Paul et Virginie. English

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

Literature & Fiction / Travel

The Paul et Virginie (or Paul and Virginia) is a novel. The novel's title characters are very good friends since birth who fall in love. The story is set in the island of Mauritius under French rule, then named Île de France, which the author had visited. Written on the eve of the French Revolution, the novel is hailed as Bernardin's finest work. It records the fate of a child of nature corrupted by the false, artificial sentimentality that prevailed at the time among the upper classes of France.
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Paul and Virginia

Paul and Virginia

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

Literature & Fiction / Travel

Paul and Virginia (1788) is a novel by Bernardin de St. Pierre. Inspired by his experiences in Mauritius as a young man, the novel was written for children and adults alike. In its depiction of an ideal lifestyle on an island where equality and harmony reign, Paul and Virginia is a sharp critique of social conditions in pre-Revolutionary France. It is also a fascinating, albeit problematic artifact of the colonial era, arguing for emancipation while suggesting that slaves could live happily and with dignity under the right conditions. Beloved by such figures as Thomas Carlyle, Honoré de Balzac, and Alexander von Humboldt, the once-popular novel is largely unknown to modern readers. "On the eastern coast of the mountain which rises above Port Louis in the Mauritius, upon a piece of land bearing the marks of former cultivation, are seen the ruins of two small cottages. Those ruins are situated near the centre of a valley, formed by immense rocks, and which opens...
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