Read Stories of Lilly by Dr. A. de Blincourt in French

In Interlinear, the French text is followed by an English translation below each word or phrase.

$9.97e-book and audio
How the Interlinear translation method works
How the Interlinear translation method works, vertical display

Interlinear is like subtitles for books…

Explanation of the Interlinear method in two steps
Explanation of the Interlinear method in two steps
More about Interlinear

What is Stories of Lilly about?

Stories of Lilly (Histoires à Lilly, originally published in 1868 as Lilly's little French friend, or, Step by step to easy French reading) is a book for beginner French learners. It is a collection of very short stories involving Lilly, a French-speaking child. The stories feature Lilly's life, as well as a retelling of little episodes from around the human and animal world. This small book exposes learners to common French words in topics like animals, calendar (days and months), food, numbers, kitchen tools, school, etc.

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An Interlinear book from 1868 for beginners!

Dr. A. de Blincourt, the author of this book, was a French Master at a day school in London in the 19th century. Aside from teaching, he also created French learning materials. In cooperation with others, he published this short book, and a guide for getting along at the Paris Exhibition of 1878.

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How was this French translation made?

Book restored from 150 years ago!

While researching the Interlinear translation method to improve our own Interlinear translations, we found out about some existing Interlinear texts of fiction: most from over a century ago!

We found out that nearly all such translations were old and often had become outdated and some were hard to find. We obtained a few, including books in German and Russian, as well as this one.

We realized that despite its age, this book can still be useful for beginners! Thus we transcribed and updated this book, editing some of the stories, and repackaging them into an e-book. We also asked Dr. Olivier Simon (a native French speaker from France) to record a home-made audiobook.

We are happy to say we are republishing this book after 150 years in obscurity!

Word-for-word translation

This book roughly follows the translation principles we ourselves use: it is literal but understandable. As French has a relatively similar word order to that of English, most words are translated individually and still make sense. In the rare cases where such individual translation does not work or produces too strange a word order, a few words are translated together.

Accompanied by audio

To make the book even more beginner-friendly, we made an at-home recording of the entire text of the book as an audiobook. This home-made audiobook comes comes as a collection of mp3 audio files, which can be downloaded and played on your digital device. We are providing the audiobook for free when the e-book is purchased!

Transcribed by Zen Bayno. Reviewed and recorded as audio by Dr. Olivier Simon.

This Interlinear book includes:

  • 31 standard-book pages
  • around two thousand translated words and expressions
  • original text with updated French & aligned Interlinear translations
  • a separately available French-only version of the text to get additional practice after having read the text with the Interlinear translation
  • files in the printable or electronically readable PDF format, as well as MOBI and EPUB format files for Kindles and other e-book readers, tablets, and phones - all immediately available to download
  • a free home-made French audiobook recorded specifically for Interlinear Books!

Available to order right now.

$9.97e-book and audio

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