(On a cobblestoned street in the ancient city of Bruges, a...)
On a cobblestoned street in the ancient city of Bruges, a hotel with a golden basket on its roof admits a trio of weary travelers: a father and two little girls, Celeste and Melisande. The next morning, the sisters awake to the thrill of discovering a new country and meeting new friends, including Jan, the innkeeper's son, and Monsieur Carnewal, the hardworking, warmhearted maître d'hôtel. The girls discover a world of imaginative fun within the hotel itself as well as in the picturesque city of medieval buildings and towers, where graceful swans swim in the canals and a lamplighter makes his daily rounds.
Inspired by a trip to Belgium, author Ludwig Bemelmans drew upon his youthful experiences at his family's Austrian inn to perfectly recapture the setting of an Old World hotel. This charmingly illustrated tale, originally published in 1936, is the second of Bemelmans's many books. A brief cameo by a mischievous French schoolgirl — the first appearance of the author's iconic character, Madeline—offers a hint of the joys to come.
A Madeline Treasury: The Original Stories by Ludwig Bemelmans
(“In an old house in Paris
that was covered with vines
l...)
“In an old house in Paris
that was covered with vines
lived twelve little girls
in two straight lines
the smallest one was Madeline.”
A complete collection of all the adventures of Madeline, a fearless little girl full of mischief and vitality. Madeline, first published in 1939, and its five sequels have charmed generations of readers, and have become true classics.
Celebrate one of the world’s most popular and beloved fictional characters with this beautiful, deluxe collection, bringing together all six of the Madeline books in one volume. In each of these books, Bemelmans’ humorous verse, his immortal characters—Miss Clavel, Pepito, the magician, the others—and his wonderful, whimsical drawings of Paris combine to create a memorable reading experience for people of all ages.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anna Quindlen has written an introduction to the collection, which also includes “The Isle of God,” an essay by Bemelmans on how he invented Madeline, and never-before-published working sketches of Madeline, as well as photos of the Bemelmans family.
When You Lunch with the Emperor: The Adventures of Ludwig Bemelmans
(Ludwig Bemelmans—legendary bon vivant and raconteur, and ...)
Ludwig Bemelmans—legendary bon vivant and raconteur, and author of the Madeline series as well as the surprise success of 2004, Hotel Bemelmans—lived life like a character in a novel. Wherever Ludwig went and whatever he did—letting Parisian criminals baby-sit his daughter, getting caught with his toenails painted red by the Gestapo, or discovering the only restaurant with toilets in the Amazon jungle—his escapades are guaranteed entertainment.
As Anthony Bourdain says of this new collection, "Whether writing about the backstairs misadventures of cooks and waiters or travel to faraway lands, Bemelmans is always funny, insightful and dead on target. No one has ever surpassed the master." When You Lunch with the Emperor collects Bemelmans’s work under the headings of Childhood, Work, and Play. Readers will enjoy their lunch with the Bemelmans!
(“In an old house in Paris
that was covered with vines
l...)
“In an old house in Paris
that was covered with vines
lived twelve little girls
in two straight lines
the smallest one was Madeline.”
Nothing frightens Madeline—not tigers, not even mice. With its endearing, courageous heroine, cheerful humor, and wonderful, whimsical drawings of Paris, the Madeline stories are true classics that continue to charm readers, even after 75 years!
Ludwig Bemelmans (1898-1962) was the author of the beloved Madeline books, including Madeline, a Caldecott Honor Book, and Madeline's Rescue, winner of the Caldecott Medal.
(If there is such a thing as a comfort food book, Bemelman...)
If there is such a thing as a comfort food book, Bemelmans stories are it. His evocative tales of a grand hotel life have a reporter's eye for sensory detail, yet he always manages to bathe his world and it's lovable characters in the mood for a fairytale. Meet the girl-hungry hotel Magician, Kalakobe the African cook, Mr Sigsag, Monsieur Victor, Mespoulet, and an unforgettable cast of down but not yet out hotel employees. This book offers a feast of food writing. And once you've read one Bemelmans tale, you fall in love and want to read the lot.
Ludwig Bemelmans Favorite Stories: Hansi, Rosebud and The Castle No. 9 (Dover Children's Classics)
(Lavish illustrations, enchanting settings, and winsome st...)
Lavish illustrations, enchanting settings, and winsome storytelling abound in these three tales by Ludwig Bemelmans, creator of the classic Madeline books. Long out of print, these stories are now available in a single-volume treasury that promises to delight young readers.
Hansi recounts a winter holiday in the Alps, in which a city boy travels by horse-drawn carriage to Uncle Herman's house. Hansi helps feed deer in the deep forest, attempts to teach a dachshund to ski, and celebrates Christmas at a candlelight service.
Rosebud, based on an African folk tale, depicts a triumph of brain over brawn. A crafty rabbit sets out to prove that he's smarter than the intellectuals of the animal kingdom, the whale and the elephant.
The Castle No. Nine offers a humorous portrayal of a faithful servant and his madcap master. In the little Austrian town of Melk, a meticulous manservant ― with a cat, a silver candlestick, and a different wig and suit of livery for every day of the week ― is hired by a nobleman who has some peculiar ideas about language.
Ludwig Bemelmans was an American writer and illustrator of children's books.
Background
Ludwig Bemelmans was born on April 27, 1898, in Meran, in the Austrian Tyrol (now Merano, Italy), the son of Lambert Bemelmans, a Belgian painter and member of a family that had invested early in the European Ritz hotel chain, and Frances Fischer, the daughter of a prosperous Bavarian brewer. His earliest memories were of living with his father and a pantheistic French governess who taught him that church attendance was unnecessary because God was everywhere. In 1904 his father left with the governess, and his mother divorced him and took Ludwig to her family in Regensburg, Germany.
Education
Bemelmans's antagonism to authoritarians and his sympathy for rebels derived from his experiences in the Regensburg schools. After successfully negotiating the four lower grades, he attended the Koenigliche Realschule (1908 - 1911), where he was forced to repeat a year and finally failed altogether. Another unsuccessful year at a private academy in Rothenburg and six months with a tutor, who finally gave up on him, constituted the rest of his formal education.
Career
In 1912 Ludwig was apprenticed to an uncle who owned a number of hotels in the Tyrol. Although he later wrote of his many failures and dismissals, he acquired useful experience there. Unfortunately, his career was interrupted in late 1914 when he shot and almost killed a vicious headwaiter who had struck him with a heavy whip. His family was given a choice: he could be sent to a kind of reform school on a German merchant marine training ship, or he could go to America. On Christmas Eve in 1914 Bemelmans arrived at Ellis Island armed only with letters of introduction to his uncle's hotel friends. Eventually he found a place as a waiter's "runner" at the Ritz-Carlton. At this time the great New York hotels were European islands, full of interesting characters who provided subjects for the sketches that Bemelmans included in Life Class (1938) and Hotel Splendide (1941).
In June 1917 Bemelmans enlisted in the United States Army and for seventeen months kept a diary, which was later published as My War with the United States (1937). He spent much of the time working in the wards of a hospital for the criminally insane, most of them shell-shock victims. His descriptions of primitive psychiatric methods, of guards cracking under the strain, and of his own doubts about his sanity clearly explain why he wrote years later that his life was deeply colored by this experience. At that time he learned to discipline his mind and emotions and never forget that "the key to happiness" is "to forget the 'I. ' " In June 1918 Bemelmans became an American citizen. At the end of the war he was a graduate of Officers' Training School, with a second lieutenant's commission.
In 1919 Bemelmans returned to the Ritz-Carlton, where he worked off and on until 1932. In 1933 he headed a group that opened Hapsburg House in New York City, which was successful in its cuisine and art - the walls were decorated with Bemelmans's drawings and watercolors. Unfortunately, the restaurant was a financial failure and was sold in 1935. But by that time Bemelmans had launched his literary career. In 1934 he published Hansi, a juvenile book that, like most of his forty volumes, includes drawings that seem to be part of the story rather than mere "illustrations. "
In the years before World War II he began traveling, writing, and illustrating, a pattern he followed for the rest of his life. In 1937 and again in 1940 he traveled extensively in Ecuador, gathering the material for The Donkey Inside (1941), a remarkable combination of ebullient good humor and vignettes that are stunning in their horror and violence. The work of this period reflects his loathing of Nazism, no doubt affected by his overnight imprisonment by the gestapo in Munich in 1935 for a satiric speech about Hitler that he had made in an inn in Berchtesgaden. But his horrifying description in The Best of Times (1948) of a postwar visit to Dachau also includes an affirmation of his faith in "the small bourgeoisie" and in civilization's power to survive. In 1947 he published Dirty Eddie, a funny by-product of his experience in Hollywood, where he had coauthored Yolanda and the Thief (1945) and met Lady Elsie Mendl, to whose vitality, courage, and gospel of beauty he paid homage in To the One I Love Best (1955).
Bemelmans considered himself an artist to whom writing was only an economic necessity. His art, too, was always for a "purpose" until 1953, when he began to paint seriously. The characteristic works reproduced in My Life in Art (1958) are reminiscent of Chagall in mood and of the fauvists in method. In these years he also produced several novels that are among his best work - particularly Are You Hungry, Are You Cold (1960) - and a number of well-received children's books. Just three days before his death in New York City, Bemelmans began writing the story of his childhood. If only a minor novelist, he was also a painter of great verve and excitement, a brilliant creator of children's books, and one of the most distinguished figures in the long line of American humorists.
Like many comic writers Bemelmans felt deeply the tragedy of human existence. But he also saw the world as a place of miracles and great rewards and wrote, "I just can't seem to hate the people I write about. "
Connections
Bemelmans married Madeline Freund on November 23, 1935; they had one daughter.