Dear classics reader,
On this week’s strangely painted piece of cardboard you will find:
Some background on Françoise Sagan before we start reading Bonjour Tristesse next week;
Birthday wishes to Laurie Lee;
A preview of coming attractions and other notices;
And for paid subscribers:
The week’s new classics – including a newly translated novel by Victor Hugo;
And our final discussion of The Third Policeman – with notes on death, hell and bicycles.
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Françoise Sagan (1935-2004)
I’m very much looking forward to reading Françoise Sagan’s sultry, slim novella Bonjour Tristesse with you. We’re going to read it over two weeks, starting next Friday 3rd July. All the details are here.
Beforehand, here is a little about Sagan’s life.
Françoise ‘Kiki’ Quoirez was born in 1935, the youngest daughter of wealthy parents.
She read voraciously and decided at the age of seventeen – after being expelled from two schools and failing her second-year exams at the Sorbonne – to write a novel. She took her pen name, ‘Sagan’, from the Princesse de Sagan in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
Sagan’s novel, Bonjour Tristesse, was an immediate succès de scandale. She became a celebrity and indulged her passions for fast cars, cocaine and gambling at Monte Carlo.
Her eagerly awaited second novel, A Certain Smile, followed in 1956. In 1957, she had a near-fatal accident in her Aston Martin.
In the 1960s, Sagan had a sequence of marriages and affairs with men and women. She focussed on writing plays, which were only moderately successful, before returning to writing novels. She wrote more twenty-one novels in all, but was always best known for her first.
She died in 2004 of a pulmonary embolism. She had written her own obituary for the Dictionary of Authors:
‘Appeared in 1954 with a slender novel, Bonjour Tristesse, which created a scandal worldwide. Her death, after a life and a body of work that were equally pleasant and botched, was a scandal only for herself.’
I look forward to reading Bonjour Tristesse with you, starting next Friday.
Happy Birthday Laurie Lee
In other news, today was Laurie Lee’s birthday. He was born on this day in 1914, 112 years ago.
Laurence Lee was born in Stroud in Gloucestershire and grew up in the nearby village of Slad. At nineteen, he left home and walked to London, and then across Spain. He wrote volumes of poetry, documentary film scripts and a trilogy of bestselling autobiographies. ‘He had a nightingale inside him,’ read his obituary, ‘a capacity for sensuous, lyrical precision.’
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee (1969)
Abandoning the Cotswolds village that raised him, the young Laurie Lee walks to London. There he makes a living labouring and playing the violin. But, deciding to travel further a field and knowing only the Spanish phrase for ‘Will you please give me a glass of water?’, he heads for Spain. With just a blanket to sleep under and his trusty violin, he spends a year crossing Spain, from Vigo in the north to the southern coast. Only the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War puts an end to his extraordinary peregrinations . . .
[UK] Penguin Modern Classics | 194 pages | introduced by Robert Macfarlane
Coming Attractions and Other Notices
Future monthly read-alongs
For a preview of our upcoming monthly read-alongs, take a peak here.
The Evesham Festival of Words
If you’re near Worcestershire this afternoon, come to the Evesham Festival of Words! I will be speaking at 3.30pm about the history of the Penguin Classics series, which marks its 80th anniversary this year. Here are all the details.
The Idler Festival
And then if you’re in London on Sunday 12 July, it would be lovely to see you at the glorious Idler Festival at Fenton House in Hampstead. I will be leading a guided walk of literary Hampstead at 12 noon on the Sunday. Here are the details.
Big Think – Summer 2026
I’m very glad to have a piece in the next issue of Big Think: the theme of their summer issue is ‘The Opt-Out Nation’. I’ve written about Bartleby the Scrivener and other forms of opting out in literature.
Here is some more information about the issue. Big Think and Big Think Books are here on Substack. Become a member to get your copy of the print edition.
Annual book subscription
If you’re enjoying our read-alongs, why not treat yourself to the Hatchards Classic Book Club annual book subscription?
You (or a friend) can receive all the books we read each month here on Read the Classics, beautifully gift-wrapped and delivered to your door, anywhere in the world, as well as a year’s complimentary subscription to Read the Classics, so you can choose to read along with us, if you wish.
To find out more, follow this link or email Hatchards directly: subscriptions@hatchards.co.uk
