"First" is fiction.

Gutenberg's Bible was preceded by several ephemera printed with movable type which the legendary B42 always claimed to be the first to use. No matter. The true origin may in fact be Buddhist, since in 1377 the Jikji was already being printed with a similar method.

In 1021, the Vikings were the first Europeans to land in America, leaving Columbus to thank Thor for the legend: Columbus himself only reached the continent in 1498, six years after anchoring at Cuba.

The precedence of Niépce's heliography long remained a point de vue of specialist opinion, while "daguerreotypes" kept the place of history's first photographs in the popular imagination.

Hilma af Klint practiced radical abstraction several years before Kandinsky established himself as the pioneer of that aesthetic revolution. We shall, of course, leave aside the mischievous Boronali, the modest grey donkey who also beat the famous Blue Rider to the post.

As much as Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft vied for the first feminist manifesto, they are long preceded by Christine de Pizan, who refuted the "inferiority" imposed on her. She was already claiming equality between the sexes a mere four centuries before them.

For all his airs as history's first detective, Poe's Dupin would not unmask his murderer until 22 years after Hoffmann's delicate Scudéry; Cyrano had his nose among the stars well before Jules Verne, but well after Francis Godwin and Johannes Kepler.

The Dictionnaire de l'Académie française? Richelet's Dictionnaire françois takes precedence, itself inspired by Jean Nicot's.

The Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert? It began as an attempt to translate Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia.

Can one consider fries to be Belgian? What does pasta owe to the Arab world? Isn't the croissant a descendant of the Austrian kipferl? The very idea of champagne may have been born in the mind of an Englishman, Christopher Merret!

"First" is decidedly fiction, but to open this new season, Le Feu Follet is pleased to offer you the very first look at its brand-new selection: "Once Upon a First Time…"

SELECTION. « Once upon a first time... »

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THE INVESTIGATION. Aragon's Earliest Known Poem: The Birth of a Poet Soon to be Buried Beneath the Shells of the Great War

One is not serious at seventeen, but one is already a poet.

One is not born Aragon, one becomes him. Through the trauma of the first World War, the upheaval of Dadaism and the enthusiasm of Surrealism, through communist conviction, through Resistance to oppression, through love…

Before Elsa's gaze, before the Affiches rouges, the comrades, the artistic revolutions (even before the shell that would bury him in the trenches) Aragon is already Aragon, from the very first poem, feverishly written in pencil on a schoolboy's page and given to his friend "Anicet"…

FOCUS. "Jacques in Wonderland".

"Looking through the collection of Jacques Prévert's 169 collages, one is in the presence of a fascination with the fantastic, an expectancy of the unimaginable.

One is carried away, as Baudelaire already wished: anywhere out of the world; thanks to Jacques Prévert we escape the tyranny of everyday reality, the routine of already-seen landscapes and people, the imitation of the world into which, from birth, we have been condemned to live.

A liberation prolonged by every collage. Jacques in Wonderland…"

Philippe Soupault.

Our latest acquisitions

A Search fresh as a daisy ◊ Martine gets it off her chest

Little Deerbrooks make great stories ◊ When the rubber meets the trade 

Blood is thicker than water ◊ All's Foire in Love and War

Albert’s No Stranger to Gratitude ◊ Tell-a-Tale-machus

SUMPTUOUS CHAMBOLLE-DURU RED MOROCCO BINDING WITH DOUBLURE

François de FÉNELON
Les Avantures de Telemaque fils d'Ulysse

Florentin Delaulne ◊ Paris 1717
 

First complete edition.

It is illustrated with two frontispieces, twenty-four full-page engravings, and a folding map of Telemachus's travels.  

First edition in accordance with Fénelon's manuscript, here richly bound in full red morocco signed Chambolle-Duru.

Marcel PROUST
À la recherche du temps perdu

Gallimard ◊ Paris 1946-1947
 

New edition, limited to 2,200 numbered copies.

Publisher's full-board bindings after the original design by Mario Prassinos.

An attractive complete set in 15 volumes.

William Makepeace THACKERAY
Georges GUIFFREY (Trad.)
La Foire aux vanités
Hachette & C^ie ◊ Paris 1855

First edition of the French translation established by Georges Guiffrey.

A nice copy.

COLLECTIVE
Lectures on India rubber. Being the official account of the proceedings of the conference held in connection with the international rubber and allied trades exhibition

International rubber and allied trades exhibition ◊ London
 
Rare first edition of this collection of papers on the production and uses of India rubber.

Illustrated with 3 plates hors texte comprising 6 figures.

Only one copy recorded in the CCF (Musée de l'Homme).

THE PROVINCIAL NOVEL THAT INSPIRED CHARLOTTE BRONTË, FROM THE LIBRARY OF A CONTEMPORARY WOMAN READER

Harriet MARTINEAU
Deerbrook. A Novel
Edward Moxon ◊ London 1839

First edition.

First edition of the debut novel by English feminist and abolitionist Harriet Martineau, a pioneering work in raising public awareness of gender equality and public health.

ill. Marcel MARLIER & Gilbert DELAHAYE
Martine fait du théâtre

Casterman ◊ Tournai 1969
 

New edition, front and rear pastedowns and free endpapers signed by Gérard Grée.

Superb original blue pencil portrait of Martine by Marcel Marlier, drawn within the tondo on the first free endpaper, surrounded by his presentation inscription.

UNPUBLISHED LETTER BEFORE HIS DEATH AT ABOUKIR: "I GAVE YOUR REGARDS TO GENERAL BONAPARTE"

Luc-Julien-Joseph CASABIANCA
[Napoléon BONAPARTE]
Autograph letter by the commander of the Orient aboard his vessel

1798
 

Autograph letter signed "Luzio," by Luc-Julien-Joseph Casabianca. 

A precious letter written by Luce de Casabianca "aboard the Orient" to his brother-in-law, André Colonna Ceccaldi who led a Corsican uprising for independance the following year. 

Casabianca speaks tenderly of his son, young Giocante, aged ten, who would die at his side aboard the Orient during the Battle of Aboukir, just weeks after this letter was written.