Georges Bataille - Literature and Evil & other works (14 books)

GEORGES BATAILLE (1897-1962), by profession a librarian at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, was a French intellectual and literary figure working in literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art. The French surrealist continues to be important for his groundbreaking focus on the visceral, the erotic, and the relation of society to the primeval. The wellsprings of Bataille's work apparently lay in personal experience, in particular his childhood with a suicidal mother and a blind, syphilitic father, and yet his ideas resonated deeply with other mid-century philosophy and helped to pave the way to contemporary critical theory.


The following books are in PDF format (in varying degrees of quality) unless otherwise indicated:

* THE ACCURSED SHARE: An Essay on General Economy, Vol. 1: Consumption (Zone Books, 1988). Translated by Robert Hurley.

* THE ACCURSED SHARE: An Essay on General Economy, Vols. 2 & 3: The History of Eroticism & Sovereignty (Zone Books, 1991). Translated by Robert Hurley.

* THE BATAILLE READER (Blackwell, 1997). Edited by Fred Botting and Scott Wilson.

* BLUE OF NOON (Paladin, 1988). Translated by Harry Matthews.

* EROTISM: Death and Sensuality (City Lights, 1986). Translated by Mary Dalwood.

* GUILTY (Lapis, 1988). Translated by Bruce Boone.

* THE IMPOSSIBLE: A Story of Rats followed by Dianus and The Oresteia (City Lights Books, 1991). Translated by Robert Hurley.

* LASCAUX, or The Birth of Art (Skira, 1955). Translated by Austryn Wainhouse.

* LITERATURE AND EVIL (Penguin Classics, 2012). Translated by Alastair Hamilton. -- ePUB

* STORY OF THE EYE (City Lights Books, 1987). Translated by Joachim Neugroschel.

* THE TRIAL OF GILLES DE RAIS (Amok, 1991). Translated by Richard Robinson. -- ePUB

* THE UNFINISHED SYSTEM OF NONKNOWLEDGE (University of Minnesota Press, 2001). Translated by Michelle and Stuart Kendall.

* VISIONS OF EXCESS: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 (University of Minnesota Press, 1985). Translated by Allan Stoekl, with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie, Jr.

* WRITINGS ON LAUGHTER, SACRIFICE, NIETZSCHE, UN-KNOWING (Special Issue of October magazine, No. 36, Spring 1986). Translated by Annette Michelson.