The Jinx (Hesperus Classics) - Softcover

'The poet, painter and novelist Théophile Gautier was one of the great movers and shakers of the mid-19th-century Parisian artistic scene and, if this neglected miniature masterpiece is anything to go by, a post-modernist avant la lettre.' --The Guardian

'The novel is a precursor of Modernism, even post-Modernism, based on the adventures of the 17th-century Mademoiselle de Maupin, bisexual and given to cross-dressing and fighting duels. (Baudelaire dedicated 'Les Fleur du Mal' to Gautier who has been credited with the invention of the word 'modernité')...the story deserves to be read. It is perfectly, elegantly done, and carries the same sort of conviction as 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'. It s also full of literary and artistic references you can have pleasure spotting, before checking with the notes at the back. --The Scotsman

'The tale is half predictable mid-nineteenth-century fancy (the sort of conceit that Wilde would later love) and half startling proto-modernist phantasmagoria: a world of deadly gazes and consumptive pallors rendered in the most bizarre, hallucinatory style. Gautier is a master of metaphorical oddity: Alicia's bumptious uncle couldn't help but make you think of a chocolate praline wrapped in cotton wool (it's that 'couldn't help but' that makes you think you're in the presence of the most eccentric imagination). --Time Out

A painter who became a novelist, Théophile Gautier formulated the notion of art for art’s sake.” In this literary gem, the gaze is the central character as the eye of the beholder turns deadly. Paul d’ Aspremont, on holiday in Italy, meets his fiancée in all but name, a young English girl named Alicia Ward. What begins as an urbane and courtly affair descends into a Gothic nightmare as Paul is revealed to possess the evil eye,” a jinx that kills all those he befriends. Novelist, poet, and critic, Théophile Gautier was a key figure in the Romantic movement in France.