First edition.
Bradel bindings in full apple-green boards, smooth spines slightly browned and decorated with gilt fillets, traces of rubbing to headcaps, corners slightly bumped, some tears to leading edges, contemporary bindings.
Some foxing.
Original ink wash drawing. Of pleasant sepia color, in perfect state of preservation. It represents an Italian landscape, executed in the first quarter of the 19th century. The author signed his drawing at lower right.
Rome in the 19th century was a place of convergence for European artists. The finest among them came there to train by copying paintings of Renaissance masters. It was also an opportunity for them to paint or draw the landscapes and nature of Latium.
First edition, very rare. Three states can be distinguished: the first, ours, is distinguished by the title page entitled Oeuvres posthumes, as is the half-title. The second state substitutes a new title page entitled Album d'un pessimiste, with the half-title still indicating Oeuvres posthumes (this is the state known and described by Clouzot). The third state has a new title page dated 1836, again entitled Album d'un pessimiste, with the half-title oeuvres posthumes (this is the most common state); however, the mention of a notice by L'Héritier has disappeared to make way for the mention of a biographical notice (extracted from Michaud's Biographie universelle). L'Heritier's notice was removed from the first state, as the publisher preferred not to include it for fear of offending certain contemporaries mentioned.
Rabbe's works are preceded by Victor Hugo's poem: A Alphonse Rabbe, which would later appear in Les chants du Crépuscule, published in 1836.
These posthumous works were collected and published by the writer's nephew Charles Rabbe, who received a subsidy from the Ministry of Public Instruction for this purpose.
Contemporary half black shagreen bindings. Spine with false raised bands decorated with blind thick fillets. Gilt title and volume numbers. Owner's name at foot: Gauger. Minor rubbing to headcaps. 2 corners slightly bumped. Very light scattered foxing. A handsome copy.
A dark and sombre writer, marked by failure and the futility of things, who died in 1829 from opium excess (it is unknown whether his death was suicide or an unfortunate dosage of opium), Rabbe would enchant Baudelaire, receive the touching solicitude of Victor Hugo, and André Breton would not forget him in his anthology. All of Rabbe's pages are filled with a sickly and feverish romanticism, haunted by pessimism and despair, of which his principal work that would make his reputation: Philosophie du désespoir, is emblematic of his profound melancholy and his cult of death. Essays, commentary and maxims, prose poems punctuate these posthumous works, a model of dark romanticism.
Of greatest interest is the exceptional rarity of this very first state of Alphonse Rabbe's major work, unknown to Clouzot and to most bibliographers. The Bibliothèque Nationale de France possesses only the second state, and French catalogues contain only copies dated 1836.
New édition, illustrated with 4 folding plates (tree of consanguinity, tree of affinities, genealogy of Charles Le Bel and Blanche de Bourgogne, of Louis XII and Jeanne de France)
Contemporary full marbled brown sheep binding. Spine with raised bands decorated. Beige morocco title label. Rubbing to headcaps, joints, edges and corners; handsome copy, fresh.
Bookplate: Library of the Grand Seminary of Versailles, and stamp on title page.
