Flemish Legends (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Flemish Legends There never was a book which needed less of an introduction than this one, unless it is that it should have an apology from the translator for his handling of so beautiful an original. But since so little is generally known of these Legends and their author a word of information may be demanded. Charles de Coster flourished in the middle part of the last century. He was brought up in the court of a great dignitary of the Roman Church, and intended for the aristocratic University of Louvain, but showed early his independent and democratic turn of mind by preferring the more popular University of Brussels, to which he made his own way. Here he fell in with a group of fellow-students and artistic enthusiasts which included Felicien Rops, with whom he was associated in a society called Les Toyeux, and afterwards in a short-lived Review, to which they gave the name of that traditional Belgian figure of joyousness and high spirits, Uylenspiegel. It was in this that these Legends first appeared, written in the years 1856 and 1857, and soon afterwards published in book form. Belgian literature was not at that time in a very flourishing condition, and little general appreciation was shown of de Coster's work, but it was hailed with enthusiasm by a few of the more discerning critics, and won him a place on a Royal Commission which was investigating mediæval state papers. After publishing another book, Contes brabançons, likewise based on the folk-lore of his country, he seems to have withdrawn into himself and led the life of a dreamer, wandering about among the peasants and burying himself in the wide countryside of Flanders, until he had completed his epic of the Spanish tyranny, Ulenspiegel, which has already been translated into English. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.