Paul and His Dog, v.2

Paul and His Dog, Volume 2 is the second volume of a French popular novel by Charles Paul de Kock (1793-1871). De Kock was one of the most commercially successful French popular novelists of the nineteenth century and produced an enormous body of Parisian comic and romantic fiction across his long career.

The novel takes the relationship between Paul and his dog as the organizing device for a comic and romantic plot set in contemporary Paris and the surrounding French countryside. De Kock’s novels typically combine the various character types of mid nineteenth century French popular fiction with the specific Parisian settings and social texture that his readership wanted.

De Kock’s books were translated into many European languages and reached a long international audience during his lifetime. He was particularly popular in England, where various of his comic novels appeared in English translation across the 1840s through the 1870s. His commercial success made him one of the wealthiest French writers of his generation, though his critical reputation has not survived in the way that his contemporaries Balzac and Hugo have.