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The Story of a Child — cover
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Aeneas Press edition Victorian

The Story of a Child

by Pierre Loti 1850–1923

The book, and the century it came out of.

A childhood recalled exactly: a house in Rochefort, a garden, a museum of shells, an older brother who went to sea and did not come back, and the moment a boy decides he will leave. Loti was Julien Viaud, a naval officer who rose to captain and wrote from every port the service sent him to; this 1890 memoir is the key to all of it — everything he chased for forty years is already here, in one garden.

There is today a widely spread new interest in child life, a desire to get nearer to children and understand them.
The first sentence of The Story of a Child
A note on this edition

The Story of a Child, 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.

The edition
Format
Ebook
Extent
about 176 pages
Reading time
about 4 hours
Illustrations
Full-page plates, credited
Text
Complete, unabridged
Language
en
This edition
2026
ISBN
9785486836862
The plates

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.

Mortefontaine: The Path to the Little Fence, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot
Mortefontaine: The Path to the Little Fence Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot 1855
Landscape, Georges Michel
Landscape Georges Michel 1840
La vague, Félix Ziem
La vague Félix Ziem 1855
Valley Farm, John Constable
Valley Farm John Constable 1835
A Croft at Lodskov near Vognserup Manor, Zealand, Johan Lundbye
A Croft at Lodskov near Vognserup Manor, Zealand Johan Lundbye 1847
A Winter Landscape at Sunset with Figures on a Frozen River, William James Müller
A Winter Landscape at Sunset with Figures on a Frozen River William James Müller 1841
The setting

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.

A page of The Story of a Child as set for this edition
The opening of a chapter
A page of The Story of a Child as set for this edition
A page where a plate falls

Both photographed from the finished volume.

Colophon

The Story of a Child, 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, 9785486836862, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.

Before you buy

Questions readers ask

Is this the whole of The Story of a Child?
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 176 pages, which is roughly about 4 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.
If this one suits you
The Story of a Child
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