Atala

About this book

In the forests of Louisiana in the early eighteenth century, the old blind Natchez chief Chactas tells a young Frenchman, René, the story of his youth: captured by an enemy tribe and condemned to death, he was freed by Atala, the beautiful Christian daughter of the enemy chief, and the two fled together through the wilderness. They found refuge with an old missionary, Father Aubry, but Atala was bound by a vow made by her dying mother, which stood between them.

Context and significance

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848), who had travelled in America in 1791, published the short novel in 1801, and its dreamy, exotic descriptions of nature and its mixture of passion and Christian feeling made it a founding work of French Romanticism. This edition has illustrations by Gustave Doré. Compare Paul and Virginia.

About the author