Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-1889) is one of the most notorious of decadent writers and the subject of a major critical and popular resurgence in France. His work has been adapted for film most recently by Catherine Breillat (The Last Mistress) and in the fifties by Alexandre Astruc (The Crimson Curtain, also the subject of a film planned in the 1920s by Andre Breton).
Raymond N. MacKenzie is professor of English at the University of St. Thomas. His recent translation of Zola's Germinal was a finalist for the PEN Translation Prize, and his translation of Madame Bovary was included in the Norton Anthology of Western Literature.