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25 000 €

Réf : 85264

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Charles BAUDELAIRE

Les Fleurs du Mal

Michel Lévy frères, Paris 1868, 12,5x18,8cm, broché.

Michel Lévy frères, Paris 1868, 12,5x18,8cm, original wrappers
Third edition, expanded with 25 new poems. One of the very few deluxe copies on hollande paper, only deluxe issue. In its original wrappers, as issued, skilfull restorations to spine and first cover, some letters of the spine title restored. Some foxing to the first few leaves. Housed in a custom clamshell box featuring the original cover design, signed by Julie Nadot.
With a steel-engraved frontispiece portrait of the author by Nargeot and a lengthy introduction by the poet Théophile Gautier along with an addenda selected by Baudelaire containing articles and letters from 1857 by Barbey d'Aurevilly, Dulamon, Sainte-Beuve, Charles Asselineau, Custine, Edouard Thierry and Émile Deschamps.
Like all first issue copies, the cover is dated 1869.
Exceedingly scarce copy on hollande, the only deluxe issue: less than ten copies are said to have been printed.
This comprehensive edition contains 25 unpublished poems, totaling 151 poems (100 poems in the 1857 edition). Among the new poems, eleven were previously published in Les Épaves.
Although wished and prepared by the author himself, this last edition was assembled and edited by Banville and Asselineau. The copy Baudelaire had “prepared for the third edition of Les Fleurs du Mal” mentioned in his editor Poulet-Malassis' correspondence has since been lost. It is impossible to know if his faithful friends respected his original layout and poem selection. Most of the new poems were subsequently placed at the end of Spleen et Idéal, between the poems “Sympathetic Horror” and “Self-Tormentor”.

This last edition was used as the first volume of Baudelaire's complete works, as stated “œuvres complètes” on the cover. Les Fleurs du Mal was also sold separately, given the several years it took to publish all seven volumes of the complete works.
The only copy still in wrappers, as issued, we are able to trace, one of the very rare copies on hollande, only deluxe issue of the definitive edition, wished by Baudelaire.

 

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