The writings of Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve represent an enormously complex enterprise and bespeak an intelligence of many parts. Given the nature of the main body and most influential aspect of his massive oeuvre, its bulk in the thirty-nine volumes comprised by Critiques et Portraits littéraires (Critiques and Literary Portraits, 1832; enlarged, 1836-1839), Port-Royal (1840-1859), Causeries du Lundi (Monday Chats, 1851-1862), and Nouveaux Lundis (New Mondays, 1863-1870), students of nineteenth-century French literary culture have understandably focused attention on Sainte-Beuve as a literary biographer, critic, and historian of mentalities whose practice of "le portrait littéraire" (the literary portrait), a descriptive yet critical mode of explication by genealogy, natural history, and circumstantial influence, has been widely imitated. Historical record indicates, however, that Sainte-Beuve aspired to make his mark with other, more obviously creative, kinds of writing as well. In addition to the novel Volupté (1834) and a clutch of...