Henri de Régnier (1864-1936)
Bewildering Stories biography
He first achieved prominence as a poet with Aréthuse (1895), Les Jeux rustiques et divins (1897) and Les Médailles d'argile (1900). From 1895 onwards, however, he became friendly with Alfred Vallette who had opened a new publishing house in Paris in 1893: Mercure de France (The French Mercury), and Vallette it was who would publish the symbolist tales contained in Le Trèfle noir (“The Black Trefoil”).
These were followed in 1897 by the stories in La Canne de jaspe (“The Jasper-Handled Walking Stick”) and from then on by other collections of stories such as Le Plateau de laque (“The Lacquer Tray”) in 1913 and Histoires incertaines (“Uncertain Stories”) in 1919.
Brian Stableford (b. 1948) has translated and adapted many of these stories in his book A Surfeit of Mirrors (Black Coat Press).
“La Bougie de M. d'Andercausse” (“Mr. d’Andercausse's Candle”) is one of the stories in Les Bonheurs perdus (“Lost Contentment”), a later collection of stories published by Mercure de France in 1924.
Copyright © 2021 by Michael Wooff
