
BACCARA - HECTOR MALOT - 1886
In the shadow of the tiny Puchot, a river too modest to appear on most maps, lies the industrious town of Elbeuf. For centuries its cold, clear waters fed the looms and vats that turned the town into a centre of linen and cloth production. The narrative follows the Adeline family, beginning with a clever laborer who, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, seized the chance to launch his own workshop. Over successive generations his descendants transform the cramped workshop on Impasse du Glayeul into a celebrated textile house, accumulating honors and civic influence.
Through vivid descriptions of soot‑blackened lanes and the river that once turned copper‑green with dye, the novel captures a town teetering between age‑old craft and the relentless march of industrial progress. The Adelines’ attachment to the cramped Glayeul courtyard symbolizes their pride, while steam power and artificial chemicals threaten the river’s natural virtues, hinting at conflicts that will test family ambition and community bonds.
Language
fr
Duration
~9 hours (538K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Christine De Ryck, Renald Levesque and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr
Release date
2004-04-01
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1830–1907
Best remembered for the beloved classic Nobody's Boy (Sans Famille), this 19th-century French novelist wrote stories full of hardship, travel, and surprising tenderness. His work reached a wide audience by mixing page-turning adventure with sharp sympathy for children and ordinary people.
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by Hector Malot

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