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Guy de MAUPASSANT

Le Horla

Paul Ollendorff, Paris 1887, 11,5x18,5cm, relié.

 
First edition on ordinary paper.
Contemporary binding in half red morocco with corners, spine with five raised bands framed with black fillets, gilt date on tail, marbled paper boards, bouquet-patterned endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers and spine preserved (small angular restoration to the foot of the first board), gilt head. Binding signed by Léon Gruel, one of the most renowned bookbinders of the late 19th century.
Le Horla consists of thirteen short stories: Le Horla, Amour, Le Trou, Sauvée, Clochette, Le Marquis de Fumerol, Le Signe, Le Diable, Les Rois, Au bois, Une famille, Joseph, L'Auberge and Le Vagabond.
Precious signed and inscribed copy by Guy de Maupassant: « À monsieur Jules Claretie, cordial hommage. Guy de Maupassant ».  [‘To Mr Jules Claretie, with my warmest regards. Guy de Maupassant']
Autograph inscriptions on the first edition of Le Horla are particularly rare, especially in signed contemporary half-marocco bindings. Only fourteen copies have been recorded by Thierry Selva (Maupassant par les textes).
A great admirer of Maupassant's work, the critic, novelist, and playwright Jules Claretie sponsored his admission to the Société des Gens de Lettres on March 3, 1884. Le Horla was published during the height of public interest in theories of hysteria and personality disorders. Both Maupassant and Claretie attended the lessons and hypnosis sessions of Doctor Charcot at the Salpêtrière hospital, whose influence can be found in Le Horla and many of Maupassant's fantastic short stories. Claretie himself explored similar themes in his 1885 novel Jean Mornas, depicting a crime committed under hypnotic suggestion, and later in L'Obsession: Moi et l'Autre (1908), which tells the story of a painter suffering from a split personality.
In 1892, as Maupassant succumbed to syphilitic madness under the care of Dr. Blanche, Claretie immediately thought of Le Horla. He reopened his copy and examined the eerie connection between the writer and his work in an article for the North American Review:
 
“And while I am reading over this 'Horla," to seek there for the trace, to find there the premonitions, of the misfortune that has overwhelmed M. de Maupassant, I cannot keep from seeing him again, revolver in hand, in the room at Cannet, trying to escape by suicide from that other Horla whose sinister approach he felt ; the mania of persecution.” (‘The Shudder in Literature', August 1892)
 
English-speaking readers discovered Le Horla in 1890 (Harpers & Brothers, trans. Jonathan Stuges), which would be H.P. Lovecaft's main inspiration for his famous Call of Cthulhu. On the writer's death, Claretie once again dedicated some superb lines to him in his Parisian columns. One can easily imagine Claretie rereading the pages of this copy, offered by the author, contemplating the tragic fate of a genius whose illness eerily mirrored the hallucinations of Le Horla's narrator:
 
“"I know of nothing more heartrending than this end at the height of his powers, this sorrowful death in the prime of youth. One could have foreseen it, perhaps guessed it, this obsession with madness in such a poignant study as Le Horla - in such tales where the shudder of the unknown and the vertigo of fear run throughout. What a study of physiological literature for Arvède Barine, who was already studying disease in Poe and Gérard de Nerval! Was it overwork or heredity that doomed the poor, admirable Maupassant? Was he the victim of his artificial life as a socialite or of his solitary reveries? n this contrast of existences, which part became the morbid one?" (La Vie à Paris, 1897).
 
This masterpiece, through its precious autograph dedication, brings together two leading literary figures of the 19th century—both fascinated by the fantastic and the limits of human perception:
"I admired this man of robust, clear prose. Others knew him better, but no one admired him more. He was a classic." (Jules Claretie).
 

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