Madame Chrysanthème
by Pierre Loti 1850–1923
The book, and the century it came out of.
A French naval officer takes a temporary wife in Nagasaki for the length of his ship’s stay, furnishes a paper house on a hill, and is faintly bored by all of it — including her. Loti was Julien Viaud, a career officer who rose to captain and wrote from every port the navy sent him to; this 1887 book gave Puccini’s Butterfly its situation, and it is far colder than anything the opera does with it. The narrator’s condescension is on the page for the reader to judge. Illustrated with 60 full-page plates — paintings by Taizan, Rangzhi and Gongshou among them.
LOUIS-MARIE-JULIEN VIAUD, “Pierre Loti,” was born in Rochefort, of an old French-Protestant family, January 14, 1850.
Madame Chrysanthème, by Pierre Loti, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Salon & Steppe
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 152 pages
- Reading time
- about 3 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785501509368
60 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
Madame Chrysanthème, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Salon & Steppe shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785501509368, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of Madame Chrysanthème?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Pierre Loti's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 152 pages, which is roughly about 3 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
