Ecstasy, by Louis Couperus; Count d'Orgel, by Raymond Radiguet; Fraulein Else, by Arthur Schnitzier; The Invisible Collection and Buchmendel, by Stefan Zweig (Pushkin Press, first three volumes £6 in UK, last volume £5 in UK).
These four small-format, elegantly produced volumes, by and interesting new publishing imprint, concentrate on a type of classic short novel or novella - with the exception of Zweig's two long-short stories. Couperus is a turn-of-the-century Dutch writer who, like some of his contemporaries, had lived for a while in the Dutch East Indies; his novella concerns a young widow, Cecil, who has an emotionally taxing affair with a seasoned man of the world and womaniser. It is in some ways, a late and rather provincial response to Madame Bovary, but sensitively and economically told, and the feminine psychology is deft and sympathetic. Cound d'Orgel was the second novel by a short-lived genius which does not, in my estimation, measure up to his first, The Devil in the Flesh (did Cocteau write some of it?). The other two books are by Viennese writers, of which Schnitzler's is the more convincing, though the second of Zweig's two tales deals with a too-too-topical subject, anti-Semitism. We are promised other titles by Hofmannsthal, Kierkegaard, Julien Gracq, Henry James, etc. An enterprising and unfashionable selection, breathing an old-style love of books.