Physical description

An Authors Love
Author: Prosper Merimee's
Publisher: Macmillan And Co
Date: 1889
Further Information: Being the unpublished letters of Prosper Merimee's 'Inconnue'

Publication type

fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on the spine cover with typed text PAT 846 MER
Paste down front end paper has a sticker from Warrnambool Mechanics Institute and Free Library.
Front loose end paper has a stamp from Corangamite Regional Library Service.
Flyleaf has a stamp from Warrnambool Mechanics Institute and Free Library.

Summary

The book is an epistolary novel (a story told in letters) written by the American author Elizabeth Balch (though it was published anonymously at the time). It was written as a highly clever literary hoax and a sequel of sorts to a major 1873 French literary sensation, Lettres à une Inconnue (Letters to an Unknown) by the famous French dramatist and short-story writer Prosper Mérimée (best known as the author of the novella Carmen). Mérimée had spent over thirty years writing passionate, brilliant, and deeply personal letters to an anonymous woman (later revealed to be Jenny Dacquin). When these were published after his death, they became a massive hit, but the public only ever saw his side of the conversation. Elizabeth Balch decided to write the missing half of the romance.