The Lost Domain: Le Grand Meaulnes Centenary Edition. This item is unavailable.The Lost Domain: Le Grand Meaulnes Centenary Edition

The arrival of Augustin Meaulnes at a small provincial secondary school sets in train a series of events that will have a profound effect on his life. Lost and alone, he stumbles upon an isolated house, mysterious revels, and a beautiful girl. Determined to find the house again, and the girl with whom he has fallen in love, Meaulnes is torn between his love and competing claims of loyalty and friendship.

This edition, published to celebrate the centenary of the work's publication, reprints Frank Davison's acclaimed translation that captures the elusive poetic subtlety of the original. In her new introduction, well known biographer and critic Hermione Lee discusses the special hold the novel has on readers and the literary qualities that have made it a modern classic.

Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri Alban-Fournier, whose only novel, Le Grand Meaulnes (The Lost Domain) was published the year before he was killed in action in 1914, at the age of 27. Like the narrator of his novel, Alain-Fournier was the son of a schoolteacher, and a chance meeting with a girl on the banks of the Seine became the rite of passage that inspired his story.

Hermione Lee is a writer, reviewer, and broadcaster. She has written acclaimed biographies of Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf, and Edith Wharton and her many other works include critical writing on a wide range of literary figures. She was Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford before becoming President of Wolfson College. In April 2012 she co-presented, with Julian Barnes, two programmes on BBC Radio 4 about Alain-Fournier and his novel.