Ourika
by Claire de Duras 1777–1828
The book, and the century it came out of.
A Senegalese girl is bought as an infant and raised in a Paris salon as an aristocrat’s ward — loved, educated, and then old enough to notice that no one will marry her. Claire de Duras lost her father to the guillotine and wrote this in 1823 from inside the society she is describing; it is the first French novel to give a black woman a mind and a voice, and it was a sensation. Illustrated with 43 full-page plates — paintings by Robert, Demachy and Lallemand among them.
A few months had elapsed since I quitted Montpellier to follow my profession as physician in Paris, when I was sent for one morning to attend a sick Nun at a convent in the Faubourg St. Jacques[1].
Ourika, by Claire de Duras, 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
- Literary Classics
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 32 pages
- Reading time
- about an hour
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785501006393
43 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.
Ourika, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Literary Classics 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, 9785501006393, 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 Ourika?
- 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. Claire de Duras'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 32 pages, which is roughly about an hour 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.
