The Necklace & Other Stories

This collection gathers late-nineteenth-century short stories, including the title tale in which Mathilde Loisel, a discontented clerk's wife, borrows a necklace for a ministry ball and then lives in poverty to replace what she thinks she has lost. Companion pieces typically treat Norman peasants, Paris civil servants, the Franco-Prussian War, adultery, and sudden reversals of fortune. Irony and a tight closing turn are the usual method. The volume is a set of independent stories, not a novel and not a single character's life.

Bound in light green cloth printed with a wrap-around illustrative design by Lambourne. Dark green slipcase. Light green endpapers. Page tops stained green.