Claude-Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon 16 min read

A lady, alone at night, is visited by a sylph, an airy spirit who speaks to her of love in a witty, gallant fantasy of the drawing room.

Crébillon fils's 1730 'The Sylph' is a graceful, ironic French conte of an amorous spirit and a coquettish lady. Sparkling, sophisticated, of its rococo age. Read it for an elegant little fantasy of seduction and enchantment from a master of eighteenth-century French wit.

In its time

Published in 1730, during the Pre-1800, voyages to the moon, subterranean worlds, and philosophical utopias, the deep roots of the imaginative tradition, from kepler and cyrano to the enlightenment.

Reading it

16 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).