Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814)

Along with Rousseau's Julie, the French Romanticist O.G. - not quite the iconic, omnipresent classic it once was and it can inevitably feel quite creaky and ludicrous in certain elements (and ends up with more than a scent of Christian propaganda about it) but its appeal remains obvious for its evocative and wonderfully painted setting and its tragic and transcendent amour that would be the blueprint for so many to come. Shares with Rousseau also its basic philosophical predilections (humans are born good but then corrupted by avarice, money, power etc.; the state of nature is a kind of idyllic paradise from which society separates us inevitably). The characters are wholly unreal and one-dimensional though it doesn't matter much for the purposes of the story.

Wonderfully written and worth seeking out to discover the book that sent Emma Bovary off the deep end as it's not too long either - I had to see a man about a dog and ended up reading the whole thing in a day on various train journeys.… (meer)