A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century

"A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2" by George Saintsbury is a chronicle from the early 1900s that explores how French novels changed and grew between 1800 and 1900. It looks at important writers, new ideas, and different ways of writing that made French books special during this time. The book talks about famous people like Madame de Staël and Chateaubriand, discussing how they told stories and what their books were about, showing the wide range of French writing. It begins by closely inspecting Madame de Staël and Chateaubriand, who helped move French novels forward. Saintsbury thinks about how important their books were, like Staël's "Delphine" and "Corinne," pointing out that they changed writing from being mainly about feelings to more modern ways of telling stories. He says Staël's stories could be funnier and make more sense, but he knows she helped change what people focused on in books. By looking at these writers in terms of what was happening then, Saintsbury begins to show how complex the French novel became, highlighting how writers' own lives and big changes in society affected their work.