Librarian/Curator for European Studies
Introduction
This guide is an introduction to the literature of France, excluding Francophone materials. It features books, journals, media, and databases accessible through the UCLA Library. Organized by genre, each section contains a selection of literary works and scholarly resources. Titles both in French and in English translation are included. Search the UCLA Library Catalog by author and/or title to check for other available editions in both languages. This guide is not intended to be comprehensive. Resources may be added or removed over time. If you need research help on this subject, contact Shannon Tanhayi Ahari, the Librarian/Curator for European Studies. Refer to the French Studies guide for library resources related to French history, language, and culture.
Selected Images
This illustration by the French artist Gustave Doré (1832–1883) depicts Little Red Riding Hood in bed with the wolf. The illustration appears in Les Contes de Perrault (1862), a collection of Charles Perrault's fairy tales.
Available in Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
This illustration by the French-British artist Edmund Dulac (1882–1953) is from the French fairy tale "The Blue Bird," which was published in Edmund Dulac's Fairy Book: Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations (1916).
Available in Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
Originally published in Joseph Jacobs’s Europa’s Fairy Book (1916), this image shows Beauty and the Beast as drawn by the English artist John D. Batten (1860–1932).
Available in The Project Gutenberg E-Book of Europa's Fairy Book. Public domain.
This cover of the first volume of the Fantomas series from 1911 features the titular character standing over Paris. The artist is unknown.
Available in Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
This oil-on-panel painting by Julie Philipault (1780–1862)—Racine Reading Athalie Before Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon (1819)—is currently housed at the Louvre in Paris, France. It depicts the French playwright, Jean Racine, reading his play Athalie, to King Louis XIV and his wife, Madame de Maintenon.
Available in Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
Drawn by Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse (1859–1938) and engraved by Eugène Decisy (1866–1936), the image above is a wood-engraved portrait of the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) surrounded by ghosts. It is the frontispiece to a 1917 edition of Les Fleurs du mal.
Available in Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
The French comic strip heroine Bécassine, illustrated by Joseph Porphyre Pinchon (1871–1953), is pictured here on the cover of Les Cent Métiers de Bécassine (1920).
Available in Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
This illustration of Teresa by an unknown artist first appeared in the 1887 second volume of Alexandre Dumas's (1802–1870) adventure novel The Count of Monte Cristo (1844).
Available in Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
The artwork above is Le phare des Casquets (1866) by Victor Hugo (1802–1885). The medium is brown ink and wash, black crayon, black chalk, and white gouache on paper.
Available in Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
Pictured is a program for the premiere of the play Ubu Roi (1896) by Alfred Jarry (1873–1907). The medium is lithograph on tan paper, folded sheet.
Available in Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
This illustration of a deer eating from a small tree by Clinton Peters (1865–1948) appears in the story "The Hind in the Wood" in The Fairy Tales of Madame d'Aulnoy: Newly Done Into English (1892).
Available in The Fairy Tales of Madame d'Aulnoy: Newly Done Into English. Public domain.
The image above is a theatrical poster for the 1923 film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The artist is unknown.
Available in Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
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