The text of Stendhal's classic novel Le Rouge et le Noir in this volume is an entirely new translation which renders the novelist's strict, hard style into contemporary colloquial English. For the first time in an English translation, notes are given that explain the book's local allusions and concealed autobiographical reminiscences. Students interested in the backgrounds of the novel may read the newspaper account, for the first time in English, of the murder trial upon which some of the novel's events are founded. Other materials, on Stendhal's style and on the 1830's background, are also provided. As with all Norton Critical Editions in Continental literature, a number of commentaries are here translated for the first time: Henri Martineau, Jean Prevost, George Poulet, Jean-Pierre Richard, G. Tomasi di Lampedusa, Alain, Paul Valery, Paul Bourget, and Hippolyte Tame. Other critics are Erich Auerbach, Rene Girard, F. W. I. Hemmings, Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Gide, Marcel Proust, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jose Ortega y Gasset, and Robert M. Adams. Each Norton Critical Edition includes an authoritative text, contextual and source materials, and a wide range of interpretations-from contemporary perspectives to the most current critical theory-as well as a bibliography and a chronology of the author's life and work.

司汤达（1783年-1842年）是十九世纪法国杰出的批判现实主义作家。他的一生并不长，不到六十年，而且他在文学上起步很晚，三十几岁才开始发表作品。然而，他却给人类留下了巨大的精神遗产，包括数部长篇，数十个短篇或故事，数百万字的文论、随笔和散文，游记。 他以准确的人物心理分析和凝练的笔法而闻名。他被认为是最重要和最早的现实主义的实践者之一。最有名的作品是《红与黑》（1830）和《巴马修道院》（1839）。