The Black Tulip

by Alexandre Dumas

Overview

Alexandre Dumas's novels are notable for their suspense and excitement, their foul deeds, hairsbreadth escapes, and glorious victories. In The Black Tulip (1850), the shortest of Dumas's most famous tales, the real hero is no Musketeer, but a flower. The novel - a deceptively simple story - is set in Holland in 1672, and weaves the historical events surrounding the brutal murder of John de Witte and his brother Cornelius into a tale of romatic love. The novel is also a timeless political allegory in which Dumas, drawing on the violence and crimes of history, makes his case against tyranny and puts all his energies into creating a symbol of justice and tolerance: the fateful tulipa negra.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940000746400
Publisher:	B&R Samizdat Express
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	694 KB

About the Author

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) was the son of Napoleon’s famous general Dumas. A prolific author, his body of work includes a number of popular classics, including The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask.

Robin Buss (1939–2006) was a writer and translator who worked for the Independent on Sunday and as television critic for the Times Educational Supplement. He was also the translator of a number of volumes for Penguin Classics.

Table of Contents

I. A Grateful People
II. The Two Brothers
III. The Pupil of John de Witt
IV. The Murderers
V. The Amateur Tulip-Grower and his Neighbor
VI. A Tulip-Fancier's Hatred
VII. The Happy Man Becomes Acquainted with Misfortune
VIII. An Incursion
IX. The Family Cell
X. The Jailer's Daughter
XI. The Will of Cornelius van Baerle
XII. The Execution
XIII. The Thoughts of One of the Spectators During the Last Scene
XIV. The Pigeons of Dort
XV. The Wicket in the Cell Door
XVI. Master and Scholar
XVII. The First Bulb
XVIII. Rosa's Lover
XIX. A Woman and a Flower
XX. What had Happened During the Eight Days
XXI. The Second Bulb
XXII. The Opening of the Flower
XXIII. The Jealous Man
XXIV. In which the Black Tulip Changes its Master
XXV. President Van Systens
XXVI. A Member of the Horticultural Society
XXVII. The Third Bulb
XXVIII. The Song of the Flowers
XXIX. In which Van Baerle, before quitting Louvestein, Settles his Accounts with Gryphus
XXX. In which One Begins to Suspect what Kind of Punishment was Reserved for Cornelius Van Baerle
XXXI. Haarlem
XXXII. A Last Prayer
Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

The quest to grow a black tulip doesn’t have the same narrative appeal as Dumas’s COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO or THREE MUSKETEERS, but it provides adventure enough for those who love the great melodramas of the nineteenth century. Peter Joyce delivers a fine rendition of Dumas’s meaty prose and is especially good at depicting villains and brutal jailers, less effective at conveying his nubile heroine. Although this is a lesser work by Dumas, the author’s judicious detachment, voiced so well in Joyce’s calm and untroubled delivery, holds the promise throughout that innocence will triumph and justice eventually prevail: The villain will be vanquished, and the power of the black tulip will somehow open the prison doors and unite the fateful lovers. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2013 - AudioFile