Sophie LEE
Le souterrain, ou Matilde
Chez Théophile Barrois|à Paris 1788|9 x 16.50 cm|relié
New edition, rare, following the first French edition published in 1786. Translation by De La Marre of the English novel: the Recess, or a tale of other time (1785).
Contemporary half brown sheep binding with corners. Spine with raised bands decorated with fillets. Havana morocco title label. Head slightly worn. Foot largely missing. A crack at foot. Corners slightly bumped. Split to upper joint at head. Modest binding.
Like Walpole's Castle of Otranto, The Recess is one of the first Gothic novels, not yet inhabited by the formulas and stereotypes that would exhaust the genre itself, but it already contains all the ingredients that would make it successful: spleen, melancholy, terror, settings of ruined castles and abbeys, secrets surrounding an obscure birth. This novel above all marks the superiority of English fiction, with a plot and narrative writing much more mature and developed than The Castle of Otranto. Two sisters live in the underground chambers of a castle, and the novel gradually unfolds the discovery of this strange situation. We read in the Historical, Literary and Anecdotal Memoirs drawn from the correspondence of Grimm and Diderot: "it is the story of a daughter of Mary Stuart and the Duke of Norfolk, a tissue of romantic incidents, sad, implausible, but whose sequence has nevertheless I know not what charm that can engage readers who love this kind of work."
Contemporary half brown sheep binding with corners. Spine with raised bands decorated with fillets. Havana morocco title label. Head slightly worn. Foot largely missing. A crack at foot. Corners slightly bumped. Split to upper joint at head. Modest binding.
Like Walpole's Castle of Otranto, The Recess is one of the first Gothic novels, not yet inhabited by the formulas and stereotypes that would exhaust the genre itself, but it already contains all the ingredients that would make it successful: spleen, melancholy, terror, settings of ruined castles and abbeys, secrets surrounding an obscure birth. This novel above all marks the superiority of English fiction, with a plot and narrative writing much more mature and developed than The Castle of Otranto. Two sisters live in the underground chambers of a castle, and the novel gradually unfolds the discovery of this strange situation. We read in the Historical, Literary and Anecdotal Memoirs drawn from the correspondence of Grimm and Diderot: "it is the story of a daughter of Mary Stuart and the Duke of Norfolk, a tissue of romantic incidents, sad, implausible, but whose sequence has nevertheless I know not what charm that can engage readers who love this kind of work."
€500