They are called deluxe papers, limited editions, tirages de têtes or simply first editions. They were printed in small numbers on special paper and carefully preserved, from the very beginning, by the first readers and admirers of these literary geniuses. These copies are the origin of the work and its legacy.
Complete run of the first twenty years of the newspaper Libération, founded in 1973 by Jean-Paul Sartre, Serge July, Philippe Gavi, Bernard Lallement and Jean-Claude Vernier.
6,200 issues in pristine condition (never opened).
This unique collection comprises 6,200 issues of Libération in impeccable condition (never opened), and is absolutely complete – including all the “numéros zéros”, promotional issues, special reports, thematic supplements (including the entire series of the celebrated “Sandwich” issues), and the commemorative twentieth anniversary album – from Monday 5 February 1973 to Monday 3 January 1994.
The collection is offered with its custom-made display unit (2.60 m high, 4.20 m wide, and 50 cm deep). It consists of 35 stackable compartments, each measuring 84 x 36.5 x 50 cm, each housing two sliding drawers. Each drawer holds approximately one hundred issues of the newspaper.
Provenance: Frédéric Fredj Collection.
Original albumen photograph, cabinet card format, mounted on yellow cardboard bordered in red by Nadar, with his stamp on verso, rue d'Anjou St-Honoré.
Portrait of the actress leaning on her elbow, face resting in the hollow of her hand, looking at the photographer or at whoever looks at the photograph, with a melancholic expression. Very fine photograph. Photographs of Sarah Bernhardt are most often in stage costume, performing, those representing her naturally, which are older and where she appears younger, are much rarer. The actress remained quite faithful to the photographer as we find several portraits of her from her debut until around 1900.
Manuscript annotation on verso.
Exceptional complete autograph manuscript of Ravachol’s true last testament — largely unpublished — unknown in this form, preceding its rewriting by a third party for publication in the press. A unique testimony to the genuine thought of the anarchist icon.
Four-page lined quarto manuscript, entirely written in black ink and signed twice “Konigstein Ravachol” at the foot of each sheet. Pencil corrections within the text, possibly in the hand of his lawyer. Some horizontal folds and very minor marginal tears, without loss.
Written in his prison cell during the second Montbrison trial that led to his death sentence, this text, hastily penned, without punctuation or capital letters, and in naïve spelling, was meant to be delivered orally by Ravachol during the hearing.
“Ravachol was dead set on putting in his two cents for the defence, not to defend himself, but to explain. No luck, dammit! Four words in and the judge cut him off. His statement isn’t lost, by Jove!” (Émile Pouget, in Père Peinard, July 3–10, 1892).
This self-styled Rocambole of anarchism was not allowed to read his statement aloud, but he handed it to his lawyer Maître Lagasse, and by June 23 the forbidden text appeared in the conservative newspaper Le Temps.
This first publication was so faithful to the original that it preserved the author's eccentric spelling — a fidelity that Émile Pouget would ironically criticise in the Père Peinard issue of July 3, 1892, one week before Ravachol’s execution: “Le Temps, that opportunist bedsheet, printed it as is. Like a true Jesuit, it even printed it too true. Ravachol had written the thing for himself; he knew how to read it — but there wasn’t a word of correct spelling, seeing as he knew about spelling as much as he knew about cabbage farming. Le Temps printed the thing without changing a line, so it’s practically unreadable [...]. That’s exactly what the bastards wanted, dammit! [...] I’m reprinting it below, without changing a word, just fixing the spelling.”
That same July 3 issue of Père Peinard included a corrected version — orthographically — of the statement initially published in Le Temps.
This dual publication, combined with Ravachol’s defiant bearing before the guillotine, had a powerful effect on public opinion. Until then, even anarchist publications had kept a certain distance from this provocative criminal, suspected of using the anarchist cause for personal gain. But following his execution, the testament was quickly reproduced in other newspapers, and Ravachol’s final cry of revolt soon became a genuine anarchist anthem among libertarians worldwide.
However, the version circulated in the press — the only known version until now, the original manuscript having disappeared — differs markedly from the manuscript in our possession.
Indeed, the style was lightly polished, several turns of phrase refined, and, most significantly, entire passages were excised, including the conclusion paragraph, which was fully replaced.
Our manuscript, with its crossings-out and revisions, is likely the original version of this political testament. Written in a single burst, in dense handwriting, without punctuation or paragraph breaks, it includes two lengthy sections expressing concerns for public health that are entirely absent from the published version.
The first is a third of a page-long passage about the “dangerous ingredients” added to bread: “no longer needing money to live, there’d be no fear of bakers adding dangerous ingredients to bread to make it look better or heavier, since it wouldn’t profit them, and they’d have, like everyone else and by the same means, access to what they needed for their work and existence. There’d be no need to check whether the bread weighs right, if the money is counterfeit, or if the bill is correct.”
The second, nearly a full page long, concerns the silk-dyeing industry in which Ravachol had worked: “If one reflects attentively on all the wasted materials and the energy required to produce them, it becomes clear that all that labour was for nothing — to produce chemicals and fix them on silk, which then gets burned by the overload of ingredients dangerous to workers and turns the silk into something unsafe to touch or wear, especially from the dust released when these chemicals dry.”
The length of these passages — and their absence from the printed version — indicates their importance to the author and profoundly alters the discourse’s reception.
Unlike the well-known version, this manuscript focuses on individual well-being and public health. More importantly, it draws on the personal experience of its author — his background as a silk worker — which formed the bedrock of Ravachol’s political awakening. The only other known manuscript by him (now lost, but transcribed in the republican newspaper L’Écho de Lyon) also featured a digression on silk-making and its effects on worker health.
Yet the published speech makes no mention of this formative occupation, which concludes the original manuscript. Instead, a prosaic paragraph is replaced with a strikingly eloquent plea whose polished style and rhetorical flourish break entirely with the rest of the speech — now linked only by Ravachol’s peculiar spelling.
“Yes, I repeat: society creates criminals, and you jurors…”; “I am just an uneducated worker; but because I have lived the life of the wretched, I feel the injustice of your repressive laws more keenly than any wealthy bourgeois.”; “Judge me, gentlemen of the jury, but if you have understood me, then in judging me, you judge all the wretched.”
Powerful rhetoric, and a grandiloquent finale in which one struggles to recognise the oral style of a worker whose only other fully published text — his Memoirs, dictated to his guards on the evening of March 30, 1892 — ends as abruptly and unceremoniously as our manuscript.
This soaring conclusion in praise of anarchism — for which no manuscript trace exists, and which is wholly absent even in outline from our version — is, beyond doubt, apocryphal.
Given that the first publication appeared in a conservative newspaper, it is unlikely that the journalist authored it. It is far more probable that the version sent to the press was revised and polished by Ravachol’s lawyer, Maître Louis Lagasse — an engaged legal advocate for several anarchist newspapers and future Radical-Socialist deputy.
Our manuscript thus sheds light on the ideological reframing of Ravachol’s message — not a betrayal, but a careful recasting within a more intellectual framework. The appropriation of this man, still the day before vilified as corrupting the anarchist cause, proved a complete success. He became an icon of defiance and independence, celebrated in song, sanctified in novels, idolised by fighters, and even institutionalised — his name becoming, in Walloon, a common noun.
Alongside Proudhon and Bakunin, the grand theorists of anarchy, there was lacking a figure of action — someone who embraced the violence at the core of nihilist ideology. Through this extraordinary declaration, Ravachol became that long-awaited martyr.
It is doubtful whether the authentic version of Ravachol’s speech, as we reveal it today, would have had such an impact — especially when, as Émile Pouget noted about its first appearance, “you’ve got to bust your brains to catch the meaning.” But he added slyly: “Those stuffed-shirt bourgeois think you have to spell right to have ideas in your head.”
Indeed, it would be presumptuous to claim that Ravachol’s reputation was usurped by the pen of a clever ideologue. The original manuscript, while revealing the fabrication, also highlights the genuine depth of Ravachol’s ideas and the roots of his revolt. Every notion polished or reworded by the lawyer is, albeit in rougher form, present in the manuscript.
For Ravachol, misery and deprivation drive the desperate to crime. From the outset, he holds accountable “society, which by its organisation sets people in constant conflict with one another, [and] is solely responsible.”
In response, the justice system, he argues, treats not the causes but the consequences of poverty: “Perhaps, in time, people will understand that the anarchists are right when they say that to achieve moral and physical peace, we must eliminate the causes that breed crime and criminals. [...] Well, gentlemen, there are no more criminals to judge, only the causes of crime to eradicate.”
This defence of anarchist violence is not gratuitous: despite his limited writing ability, Ravachol outlines a reform and proposes a utopian vision based on social justice: “In creating the Code, legislators forgot that they were not attacking the causes but merely the effects, and thus were not eliminating crime. [...] It would suffice to build a new society where all is held in common, and where each, producing according to ability and strength, could consume according to need.”
And in denouncing social misery, Ravachol’s original text needed no reworking by his lawyer: “Do those who have more than enough care whether others lack the essentials? A few will offer small help, but it’s negligible and cannot relieve all those in need — who will die prematurely due to all kinds of deprivation, or choose suicide to escape a miserable life, to avoid enduring the torments of hunger, countless humiliations, with no hope of relief.”
Stripped of rhetorical embellishment, this moving manuscript reveals the preoccupations of a man condemned to die. Death is omnipresent — both of criminals driven by need, and of the impoverished who labour to exhaustion. The rapid scrawl, lack of punctuation, and breathless phrasing convey the urgency of a final testament: an ink-drenched gasp in which the condemned man tries to explain his actions and summarize his struggle. There is no pause for the reader — the four pages are filled to the last line, and Ravachol, as if to stand by every word or fearing he would not finish, signs each sheet.
A previously unpublished testimony from Ravachol — who stole and killed to survive — this testament reclaims his thought in all its authenticity. Here, we see the final words of an ordinary man, driven by a real fight for justice — far removed from both the anarchist-Christ image and the criminal-Judas who hijacked the libertarian cause.
The man who emerges from this crucial document is certainly no orator. But his speech — twice censored, by judge and lawyer — reveals humanist concerns likely too advanced for his time. At the height of the industrial revolution, he denounces not only poverty and the unequal distribution of wealth, but also the dangers of industrial chemistry for the health of the working class.
Behind the ideologue and utopian Ravachol, this unpublished manuscript reveals François Claudius Koënigstein — more modest in tone but more visionary in thought — a forerunner of the ecological and public health challenges of the future.
A powerful last testament to human dignity.
First edition, one of 50 copies printed anonymously on papier japon.
First edition, one of 50 copies printed anonymously on papier japon.
Illustrated with an erotic frontispiece by Félicien Rops on chine.
Custom chemise and slipcase in half morocco and paper boards signed Boichot, some discreet restorations to the spine and covers, some discreet restorations to the top margin of the frontispiece, not affecting the engraving.
“La Présidente”, honorary nickname given to Apollonie Sabatier (alias Aglaëe Savatier, her real name), was one of the most captivating Salon hostesses of the 19th century. She inspired an ethereal love in Baudelaire who composed his most mystical poems in Les Fleurs du Mal in her honor. The other artists who frequented the apartment on Rue Frochot, during her famous Sunday dinners, had more licentious feelings for this woman of surprising wit and beauty. The sculptor Clésinger portrayed her in his lascivious “woman stung by a snake”; Flaubert wrote sensual letters to her ending with “the very sincere affection of one who, alas, only kisses your hand”; she has long since been recognized as the model for Gustave Courbet's scandalous The Origin of the World.
Gautier sent her this letter in 1850. Sabatier made copies which she never published but privately distributed to her guests:
“In October 1850, Gautier sent her [this] very long letter, farcical and obscene, from Rome, commenting with Rabelaisian exaggeration what himself and his friend Cormenin had learned regarding sexuality during their travels. Gautier knew that his freedom of expression would not offend Madame Sabatier. He had long since accustomed her to it and he prided himself on his “smut” to brighten up the friendly social gatherings of the Rue Frochot.” (Dictionnaire des œuvres érotiques)
Honored indeed by this priapic attention, ‘La Présidente' gave copies to all her guests and the reading of Gautier's “indecent prose” became a popular event at Parisian soirées. However, the letter was ultimately published – luxuriously but confidentially – after the recipient's death in 1890.
After this first edition of 50 copies on papier japon, a second edition on papier vélin followed a few months later with a larger print run and without the Rops frontispiece.
A rare, beautiful and very sought after copy.
Comme devant une place / Pleine de gens et de bruit / Je reste figé sur place / Arrêté devant ma vie
First edition of one of the most beautiful books of the 18th century, of which the text and the music are entirely engraved$. It is illustrated with an engraved title, 3 frontispieces by Le Bouteux and Le Barbier, a dedication page with the Dauphine arms, and 100 figures by Moreau le Jeune, Le Barbier, Le Bouteux and Saint-Quentin, finely engraved in copperplate by Masquelier and Née. The portrait of Laborde, which can be found on some copies, is not part of this edition and was printed in 1774, separately.
Dentelle bindings in full navy blue morocco, signed by Bruyère at the bottom of the pastedown endpaper. Slipcase covered with a blue marbled paper, suede interior, lined with navy leather; a wide navy silk riband allows the works to be taken out. Spine in five compartments very richly adorned with decorated panels and small finishing tools, fillet at the top and the bottom. Boards framed with fillets and large gilt lace work tooling with fleurons in the corner pieces. Leading edges and spine-ends highlighted with double gilt fillets. Large interior frieze. Overall immaculate paper, with some rare foxing in volume I. Slipcase rubbed on the top. Tiny, miniscule signs of rubbing on 2 spine-ends, one compartment and one leading edge. Very large margins.
Large library label: Morel de Voleine.
Magnificent copy bound in 4 volumes, very rare condition. There are usually only copies with 2 volumes for understandable cost issues. It is also very rare to find volumes of this colour that are not faded or sundamaged.
Superb original photographic portrait of Ravachol taken by Alphonse Bertillon, contemporary print on albumen mounted on bristol board.
Extremely rare handwritten caption signed by the most famous of the French anarchists, written in his hesitant and naive handwriting, at the bottom of the photo: “1er mai 1892 Koningstein [sic] Ravachol” “1st May 1892 Koningstein [sic] Ravachol”.
The spelling Koningstein chosen by Ravachol differs from his father's surname (Königstein). This variation confirmed by the Maintron (Biographical dictionary of the social and labour movement) is found in particular in a piece of his writing by hand dated 13 April 1892 and kept at the Conciergerie.
“ Un certain Varinard des Cotes a tracé son portrait graphologique. Il crut pouvoir noter l'absence d'orgueil et de vanité, la droiture et la loyauté des convictions” “A certain Varinard des Cotes drew his graphological portrait. He believed he could note the absence of pride and vanity, the righteousness and loyalty of convictions”. (Ramonet et Chao, Guide du Paris rebelle, 2008).
We have not been able to find any other copy of this photograph in international public collections or on sale at auction. Autographs of the “Christ de l'anarchie” “Christ of anarchy” are extremely rare. We know only of this unique, signed photograph of Ravachol with the exception of the one mentioned in the Conciergerie surveillance reports: “Le nommé Ravachol nous a fait voir sa photographie sur le recto de laquelle il a inscrit ces mots : « à tous ceux que j'ai aimé. Mon cœur sera toujours près de vous, ma dernière pensée sera pour vous. Tous mes baisers” “The named Ravachol showed us his photograph on the front of which he wrote these words: “To all those whom I have loved. My heart will always be near you, my last thought will be for you. All my love”. Signed Ravachol. He intended to send this photograph to his brother, along with a letter summarised as follows: “Comme vous le voyez, je suis souriant sur ma photographie, vous pourrez donc en déduire que mon sort n'est pas si triste que vous le pensez. Il ne me manque qu'une chose : la liberté. Du reste je ne fais aucune différence entre ma vie en prison et celle que je menais auparavant. Toutes les deux ne sont que souffrance. Le vrai bonheur n'existera pour moi que lorsque je verrai la réalisation de mes projets, si cela ne se peut, je préfère la mort. J'envisage ces deux points le sourire aux lèvres .” “As you can see, I am smiling in my photograph, so you can assume that my fate is not as sad as you might think. I miss only one thing: freedom. Otherwise, I notice no difference between my life in prison and the one I led before. Both know only suffering. True happiness will only exist for me when I see my projects realised, if that is not possible, I prefer death. I consider these two points with a smile on my lips”. (8 May 1892). We were un able to identify this photo and have found no other trace of it since this report. For that matter, we are not certain that this photograph still exists. Like ours, it was taken during a sitting at the Conciergerie prison on 6 May 1892 during which several poses were taken. Therefore, Ravachol backdated his dedication by probably using the symbolic date 1st May 1892, the first anniversary of the Fourmies massacre.
Mention is certainly made of our photo in the memoires of the photographer and father of anthropometry, Alphonse Bertillon: “Ce fut l'identification de l'anarchiste Ravachol qui consacra la sûreté de sa méthode. Ravachol avait fait sauter au moyen d'une bombe l'immeuble où habitait alors le procureur de la République ainsi que le restaurant Véry et menaçait de continuer cette besogne de destruction quand il fut arrêté au milieu d'une foule hurlante qui voulait le mettre en pièces, au point qu'il arriva au service anthropométrique avec un visage boursouflé, tuméfié, hideux. Il fallut toute la diplomatie, toute la pénétration psychologique d'Alphonse Bertillon pour le convaincre de se laisser mensurer et photographier. Ravachol exprima le désir, vu l'état effrayant de son visage, d'être photographié une seconde fois dès que ses plaies et ses ecchymoses seraient guéries. Bertillon le lui promit et tint parole, il poussa même la délicatesse vis-à-vis de ce bandit jusqu'à lui porter dans la cellule qu'il occupait au dépôt un exemplaire de son portrait collé sur bristol. Et Ravachol qui ne pouvait en croire ses yeux, de s'écrier : – vous êtes un honnête homme, vous au moins, monsieur Bertillon.” “It was the identification of the anarchist Ravachol who established the reliability of his method. Ravachol had blown up the building with a bomb where the public prosecutor was living at the time, as well it housing the Véry Restaurant, and he threatened to continue this destruction work when he was arrested in the middle of a screaming crowd who wanted him in pieces, so much so that he arrived at the anthropometric service with a puffed up, swollen, unsightly face. It required all Alphonse Bertillon's diplomacy, all his psychological penetration, to convince him to let himself be measured and photographed. Ravachol expressed a desire, given the frightening state of his face, to be photographed a second time as soon as his wounds and his bruises were healed. Bertillon promised him and kept his word, he even showed gentleness towards this bandit so far as to bring him in his cell a copy of his portrait mounted on bristol board. And Ravachol, who could not believe his eyes, exclaimed: – you are an honest man, you at least, Monsieur Bertillon.” (Suzanne Bertillon, Vie d'Alphonse Bertillon l'inventeur de l'anthropométrie, 1941). This highly accurate testimony sheds light on the significance of Ravachol's arrest in the famous criminologist's career and the particular relationship linking the two men. It must be said that it was Bertillon himself who proceeded to identify the activist who had been “bertillonné” (captured by Bertillon) two years earlier, demonstrating the efficacy of his classification method with vigour: this first record was among 500,000 others, already carried out since the creation of the Judicial Identification Service in 1889.
We do not know to whom Ravachol intended this portrait that he so carefully considered, but the absence of a dedicatee and the highly symbolic date he affixed to it, the ultimate challenge to the police state, suggests that he offered it to a supporter of his cause.
An extremely rare contemporary print of the anarchist icon Ravachol, whose name – immortalised in popular culture – will even become a common name, from one of Captain Haddock's insults (“ Mille millions de mille milliards de mille sabords !...Espèce de cannibale ! ... Bachi-bouzouk ! ... Ravachol !...” “A thousand millions of a thousand billions of a thousand portholes!...You cannibal!... Bachi-bouzouk!... Ravachol!...”) to a Bérurier Noir punk litany: “Salut à toi l'Espagnol / Salut à toi le Ravachol !” “Hi to you Spaniard / Hi to you Ravachol!”.
Third edition after the original published in Bordeaux in 1593 and a second Parisian edition in 1594. The copy mentions the second edition because it is the second to be published in Bordeaux.
Extremely rare handwritten presentation signed by the author on the page of the endpaper: “Pour Monsieur de Rives en memoire de moy. A Caors ce iiij [4] may 1595. Charron.” “For Monseiur de Rives in memory of me. In Caors this iiij [4] May 1595. Charron.” It is, without doubt, about Jean III de Rieu, Lord of Rives, who belonged to the family of Antoine Hébrard de Saint-Sulpice, bishop of Cahors. Pierre Charron had been called theological by this same bishop of Cahors and became his curate for six years.
Bound in calf vellum with contemporary yapp edges, blank spine.
Extensive yellowing of the endpaper page until page 30, then lessening, in the middle of the page throughout the first part and until page 120 of the second part. This yellowing resumes from page 760 until the end.
Pierre Charron's first writing, who, in this controversial work regarding Protestantism, develops three great “vérités” “truths”: religion is necessary, Christianity is revealed and only the Roman Church is the true Church. It is this last point in particular that the author tries to demonstrate. This third part is so important that it has its own title page and takes up two-thirds of the book.
In Bordeaux, Pierre Charron met Montaigne whose ideas spread through his works and his thoughts. They bonded with such a deep friendship that Montaigne designated Charron as heir to his house coat of arms.
The handwritten ex-donos or presentations of the great humanists of the 16th century are an exceptional rarity.
First edition on ordinary paper.
Publisher’s full cloth binding, flat spine, minor inconsequential wear to headcaps and corners.
Illustrations.
Rare and valuable presentation copy to Odette and Francis Ponge.
Very rare and sought-after first edition of one of the most important autobiographical works in the history of French literature, masterpiece and major work by George Sand.
Beige half sheepskin bindings, spine with four raised bands gilt tooled and framed in gilt and black, gilt tooling at top and bottom of spines, marbled paper boards, original wrappers preserved for each of the volumes, elegant imitation bindings.
Provenance: Pierre Boutellier, with his ex-libris on the front pastedown of the first volume.
Presentation copy signed by George Sand to his great friend the poet Maurice Rollinat, on the half-title of the first volume.
Pleasant and extremely rare copy, exceptionally containing a signed inscription by George Sand, almost free of any foxing and housed in uniform romantic style bindings.
First edition, one of 90 numbered copies on laid Arches paper, the only deluxe copies (grand papier) after 10 Montval.
Beautiful copy.
First edition, of which only 500 copies were issued. With an etched frontispiece portrait of Théophile Gautier by Emile Thérond.
With a substantial prefatory letter by Victor Hugo.
Red morocco binding, gilt date at the foot of spine, marbled endpapers, Baudelairian ex-libris from Renée Cortot's collection glued on the first endpaper, wrappers preserved, top edge gilt.
Pale foxing affecting the first and last leaves, beautiful copy perfectly set.
Rare handwritten inscription signed by Charles Baudelaire: “ à mon ami Paul Meurice. Ch. Baudelaire. ” (“To my friend Paul Meurice. Ch. Baudelaire.”)
An autograph ex-dono slip by Victor Hugo, addressed to Paul Meurice, has been added to this copy by ourselves and mounted on a guard. This slip, which was doubtless never used, had nevertheless been prepared, along with several others, by Victor Hugo in order to present his friend with a copy of his works published in Paris during his exile. If History did not allow Hugo to send this volume to Meurice, this presentation note, hitherto unused, could not, in our view, be more fittingly associated.
Provenance: Paul Meurice, then Alfred and Renée Cortot.
First edition, printed on vélin d'Angoulême paper, with the usual misprints and including the six condemned poems, one of the few copies given to the author and “intended for friends who do not deliver literary services”.
Full emerald morocco binding, signed by Marius Michel, original wrappers preserved.
Exceptional inscription to a childhood friend, banker and intellectual, one of the rare contemporary inscriptions that were not motivated by judicial necessity or editorial interests.
Indeed, even the few examples on papier hollande were largely devoted to strategic gifts in order to counter or reduce the wrath of justice that, in June 1857, had not yet returned its decision. Poulet-Malassis will hold a bitter memory of it: “Baudelaire got his hands on all thick paper copies and addressed them to more or less influential people as a means of corruption. Since they have not got him out of trouble, I believe he would do well to ask for them back.”
Baudelaire's correspondence makes it possible to define quite precisely the different types of inscriptions the poet made on the publication of his collection. He himself sent a list to de Broise to mention those to whom the press deliveries were dedicated, mainly possible judicial intercessors and influential literary critics. The poet then requires “twenty-five [copies] on ordinary paper, intended for friends who do not deliver literary services.” A letter to his mother tells us that he only got twenty. Some of them were sent in June 1857 to his friends, including one for Louis-Ludovic Tenré. Others were saved by the poet or offered late like the ones for Achille Bourdilliat and Jules de Saint-Félix.
If Tenré, this childhood friend whom Baudelaire has just found again in December 1856, is honored with one of the poet's rare personal copies of the Fleurs du mal publication, the three misprints he immediately noticed having been carefully corrected by hand, it is not on account of a service delivered or in anticipation of an immediate benefit. However, as always with Baudelaire, neither did he send his masterpiece to his boarding companion from Louis-le-Grand school as a simple “reminder of good friendship.”
As early as 1848, Louis-Ludovic Tenré took over from his father, the publisher Louis Tenré, who, like other major publishers, moved into investment, providing loans and discounts exclusively for those in the book industry. These bookseller-bankers played a key role in the fragile publishing economy and contributed to the extreme diversity of literary production in the nineteenth century, supporting the activities of small but bold publishers and liquidating other major judicial clashes.
In December 1856, Baudelaire tells Poulet-Malassis that he had deposited an expired banknote with this “old school mate,” which Tenré, out of friendship, agreed to accept. It was the initial advance for “the printing of one thousand copies [of a collection] of verses entitled Les Fleurs du Mal.” With this copy hot off the presses, Baudelaire then offers Tenré the precious result of the work discounted by his new banker. It is the beginning of a long financial relationship. Amongst all of Baudelaire's discounters, Louis-Ludovic Tenré will be the poet's favorite and the only one to whom an autographed work will be sent.
Nicolas Stokopf, in his work Les Patrons du Second Empire, banquiers et financiers parisiens, dedicates a chapter to Louis-Ludovic Tenré and evokes the privileged relationship between the poet and this unusual and scholarly financier, Paraguay consul and Latin America specialist, also the author of a significant work, Les états américains, published for the 1867 Exposition Universelle, of which he was a commissioner.
Even the poet's countless financial hazards will never cause lasting damage to their agreement. The trust this publisher's son he puts in Baudelaire is down to Tenré's interest in literature, as is evidenced by this excellently preserved copy given to him by Baudelaire. Quoted many times in his correspondence, and in his “carnet” – a kind of poetic diary written between 1861 and 1863 – Louis-Ludovic Tenré quickly became the main financial interlocutor for the poet whose life is, nevertheless, affected by the fear of his creditors.
“There is an astounding incoherence between Baudelaire's blinding intelligence and the chaos of his material life. He spends his time in his correspondence chasing money, his letters are almost exclusively about that. He is incapable of managing a budget of 200 francs per month and is in debt everywhere, even though he is not entitled to it, since he is under guardianship. Worse still: his annuity serves him only to pay the interest on the loans he takes out at very high rates. It is a vicious circle: he himself digs his own financial black hole.” (Baudelaire, Marie-Christine Natta).
The 1857 signed copies of Fleurs du Mal are amongst the most prestigious works and have for a long time had a prominent place in major private collections (Marquis du Bourg de Bozas, Jacques Doucet, Sacha Guitry, Pierre Berès, Colonel Sickles, Pierre Bergé, Bernard Loliée, Pierre Leroy, Jean Bonna, etc.).
This work's utmost importance in the history of literature, well beyond French literature, as well as the particular history of its publication, have contributed to the early interest in the first edition and even more so for the rare copies given out by the author.
In 1860, during the auction of all of Custine's property, who died in August 1857, the poems of a salacious poet dedicated to a writer of poor moral standards were little appreciated. However, by 1865, Baudelaire himself states that “for two years we have been asking everywhere [Les Fleurs du Mal], and in sales, they make quite a lot”. And by 1873 and 1874, the Gautier and Daumier library sales mention their precious copies and “the handwritten ex-dono” with which they are adorned.
Since then, the inscribed copies have been described and referenced, which has enabled bibliographers to count and allocate 55 copies of the first edition of Fleurs du Mal that were handed out by Baudelaire. Amongst them, some have been destroyed (like Mérimée's copy, during a fire at his home), others are only mentioned in the correspondence of the person to whom they are dedicated, but were never known (particularly the copies given to Flaubert, Deschamps, Custine and Molènes), several of them only made a brief appearance in the nineteenth century before disappearing (amongst which we include the copies of Honoré Daumier, Louis Ulbach and Champfleury). Finally, some major international institutions, libraries and museums acquired them very early on for their collections (including those of Saint-Victor, Le Maréchal, Nadar, Pincebourde, etc.).
Since the Second World War, only thirty or so copies of Fleurs du Mal featuring an inscription by Baudelaire have appeared in libraries, on public sale or in bookshop catalogs, each time being subject to specific attention from all of the professionals, international institutions and bibliophiles that have been informed.
Perfectly set, with its wrappers, in a Jansenist binding by one of the major bookbinders of the end of the 19th century, Louis-Ludovic Tenré's very beautiful copy, one of twenty reserved for the author, enriched with precious handwritten corrections and given by Baudelaire on publication, appears as a remarkable witness to the specific conditions under which this legendary work was published.
First edition, of which there were no grand papier (deluxe) copies, an advance (service de presse) copy.
Spine slightly bowed, with a few tears and lacks to plastic film cover. Slight foxing in the margins of a few pages.
Handsome autograph inscription signed by Michel Foucault, at the time a young teacher, to Jean-Charles Varennes.
A very rare advance copy, which could be said to have taken the place of the grand papier (deluxe) copies.
Magnificent and unpublished handwritten letter signed by Fernand Léger about American jazz and colours, addressed to Gaston Criel, author of a pioneering essay on “Swing.”
The painter looks back on his exile in the United States from 1940 to 1945, talks about Louis Armstrong and of his captivating discovery of experimental jazz in New York, in the company of the Afro-American painters of the Harlem Renaissance.
29 lines in black ink, written on one leaf.
The hand-written letter is presented under a half forest green morocco chemise, green paper boards with a stylised motif, endpapers lined with green lamb, slip case lined with the same morocco, the piece is signed by Goy & Vilaine.
Léger replies to Georges Criel and congratulates him on his American jazz essay: “Votre « swing » m'intéresse. Vous avez trouvé un style sonore qui colle au sujet”. “Your ‘swing' interests me. You have found a sound style that suits the subject.” Indeed, in his essay entitled Swing, Criel had adopted the very “bebop” rhythmic style that Léger had had the opportunity to listen to in New York. This first French language study of jazz was unanimously recognised, by the likes of Sartre and Stravinsky, Gide, Senghor and Poulenc. The undated letter was written in 1948, the year Criel's essay was published. After a long exile in the United States between 1940 and 1945, Léger went back to France and joined the communist party . Living in Paris, at the same time he reopened his painting academy in a new location on Boulevard de Clichy, which will bring him an influx of American students, former demobilised GIs such as Sam Francis and Kenneth Noland.
As early as 1924, Léger was acquainted with jazz and America at the same time in his experimental film Ballet mécanique, shot by the Americans Dudley Murphy and Man Ray, on music by Duke Ellington and George Antheil. Three stays in New York between 1931 and 1939, many projects and meetings - particularly with the writer Dos Passos - had familiarised Léger with this city that was emblematic of modernity. However, it was his exile during the war that really introduced him to America and to jazz music: “J'ai pu pendant 5 ans d'Amérique réagir pour ou contre cette expression nègre” “ “I was able, during 5 years of America, to react in favour or against this negro expression.” In 1941, he discovered the country whilst travelling on a bus towards the West, he gave lectures in California and had his Ballet Mécanique screened at the famous experimental university Black Mountain in North Carolina. It is also in the United States that, in 1942, he invented a new use of colour, inspired by the way advertising lights sweep the facades of Time Square: colour is now separated from the drawing, and gives rise to the painting Starfish (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), his series of “Cyclistes” “Cyclists” (Biot, Musée national Fernand Léger) and the “Plongeurs” “Divers,” of which he produces a enormous copy in 1943 for the architect's house, Rockefeller, Wallace K. Harrison, in Long Island.
Jazz, synonymous with modernity and freedom, was also an opportunity to explore colour. Léger gives his sound experiences a striking synthetic description: “J'ai souvent pensé en les écoutant à des équivalences colorées possibles. Les sardanes espagnols par exemple c'est de la couleur pure. Jaune bleu rouge. Le Jazz comporterait souvent des nuances” “When listening to them I have often thought of the possible colour equivalents. The Spanish Sardanas, for example, are pure in colour. Yellow blue red. Jazz often contains different shades.” He helped in New York's clubs as bebop emerged, a new form of fast-paced jazz with breath-taking skill, whose harmonic and rhythmic innovations left their mark on the painter in his compositions. The painter recalls the discovery of this furious jazz in the 1940s: “La confusion du départ m'intéressait surtout. Leur côté animal instinctif s'y donnant à plein ; des cris sourd aigus. Des bruits incontrolable [sic] ayant une valeur spontanée étonnante, ensuite la domestication de cette jolie sauvagerie s'établissait en bon ou en mal.” “The confusion at the start interested me particularly. Their natural wild side giving its all; loud, shrill cries. The uncontrollable noises having a surprising, spontaneous value, next the domestication of this pretty savagery was established for good or for bad.” The shiny brass instruments with the “cris aigus” “shrill cries” recall the shapes and sounds of the painter's cherished machines that he has used since his “période mécanique” “mechanical period” in the 1920s. He finishes his letter with a vibrant tribute to Louis Armstrong, whilst also resurrecting his past as a soldier: “Armstrong lui ça va plus loin, c'est de l'acier sous la lumière. La magie d'une culasse de 75?ouverte en plein soleil. Éblouissant” “Armstrong goes further, it is steel under the light. The magic of a breech of a 75?open to the direct sunlight. Dazzling”
In permanent search for modernity, Léger immersed himself in the Greenwich Village bohemian life and discovered the Afro-American New York culture, in full swing in the 1940s: “Mes camaraderies de jeunes peintres noirs m'ont permis d'assister à des « entrainements » pour des recherches de jazzs nouveaux.” “My young black painter friends allowed me attend ‘training sessions' to research new jazz.” His contact with the black artistic avant-garde continued in his Parisian painting academy after his departure from the United States, where he taught painter John Wilson, a prominent member of the Harlem Resistance movement, Robert Colescott, and Jamaican Karl Parboosingh. It is also at this point, around 1948, that the young Ellsworth Kelly, an important figure in minimalism, came to ask for guidance. In addition, Léger's style and modernist philosophy left a permanent mark on the American artistic landscape as a precursor to the Pop Art movement.
A rare and unpublished account of Fernand Léger's New York experiences and the sensory impact that jazz had on his painting.
« Cher monsieur Criel,
Votre « swing » m'intéresse. Vous avez trouvé un style sonore qui colle au sujet. J'ai pu pendant 5 ans d'Amérique réagir pour ou contre cette expression nègre.
Mes camaraderies de jeunes peintres noirs m'ont permis d'assister à des « entrainements » pour des recherches de jazzs nouveaux.
La confusion du départ m'intéressait surtout. Leur côté animal instinctif s'y donnant à plein ; des cris sourd aigus. Des bruits incontrolable ayant une valeur spontanée étonnante, ensuite la domestication de cette jolie sauvagerie s'établissait en bon ou en mal.
J'ai souvent pensé en les écoutant à des équivalences colorées possibles. Les sardanes espagnols par exemple c'est de la couleur pure. Jaune bleu rouge. Le Jazz comporterait souvent des nuances. Armstrong lui ça va plus loin, c'est de l'acier sous la lumière. La magie d'une culasse de 75?ouverte en plein soleil. Éblouissant.
FLeger
Fernand Léger »
“Dear Mr Criel,
Your ‘swing' interests me. You have found a sound style that suits the subject. I was able, during 5 years of America, to react in favour or against this negro expression.
My young black painter friends allowed me attend ‘training sessions' to research new jazz.
The confusion at the start interested me particularly. Their natural wild side giving its all; loud, shrill cries. The uncontrollable noises having a surprising, spontaneous value, next the domestication of this pretty savagery was established for good or for bad.
When listening to them I have often thought of the possible colour equivalents. The Spanish Sardanas, for example, are pure in colour. Yellow blue red. Jazz often contains different shades. Armstrong goes further, it is steel under the light. The magic of a breech of a 75?open to the direct sunlight. Dazzling.
FLeger
Fernand Léger »
First edition, one of 30 numbered copies on pur fil paper, this copy one of 10 hors commerce, the only grand papier (deluxe) copies.
A nice copy despite the very slightly sunned spine.
Autograph inscription dated and signed by Marguerite Yourcenar to Maurice Bourdel, director of publishing house Plon, and his wife : "... cette Electre perdue dans "un monde où l'ordre n'est pas"
Remarkable autograph letter signed by Charles Baudelaire to Auguste Poulet-Malassis, publisher of Les Fleurs du Mal, dated 28 February 1859 and written in Honfleur. 64 lines in black ink, some passages underlined, housed in a modern black half-morocco folder.
Baudelaire appears preoccupied with the “ Sainte-Beuve/Babou affair,” one of the many controversies following the Fleurs du Mal trial, in which the writer Hippolyte Babou accused Sainte-Beuve of failing to defend Baudelaire during the proceedings.
Excerpts from this letter were quoted by Marcel Proust in his celebrated Contre Sainte-Beuve, where he lamented Sainte-Beuve’s cowardice during the trial of Les Fleurs du Mal and the undue esteem Baudelaire continued to show him.
Exceptionally rare autograph satirical poem by Louis Aragon, entitled Distiques pour une Carmagnole de la Honte, written between September 1944 and February 1945. 26 lines penned in black ink on a single leaf, with a note from the author in blue ink at the foot of the page.
Our manuscript belongs to a group of thirteen poems composed during the first half of 1945, intended for publication in a poetry anthology (Aragon, published by Pierre Seghers in Paris, Collection “Poètes d’aujourd’hui” no. 2, 20 July 1945). It was sent by Aragon as a working copy to his editor and friend Claude Roy. This autograph poem is the only known manuscript of the Distiques, with neither manuscript nor proofs held in the extensive Triolet-Aragon archives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
First edition of which there were no grand papier (deluxe) copies, an advance (service de presse) copy.
Small foxing on covers marginally and slightly sunned, one joint cracked and glued down to foot, a small tear to head of spine.
Illustrated, as frontispiece, with a drawing by Etienne Dinet.
Handsome autograph inscription signed by Etienne Dinet to Georges Rochegrosse : "A G. Rochegrosse cordial souvenir de son vieil ami."
Very rare and highly sought-after first edition of Balzac's first novel signed by his name. Published a small number of copies, this first novel whose original title is inspired by the last of the Mohicans James Cooper, reappeared, reworked in 1834 under a new title: The Chouans .
This first important work of Balzac also marks the beginning of the comedy Humaine which she constitura since 1845 a scene of the military life .
Bindings in half red Russian leather, smooth backs adorned with gilt and black threads, gold friezes in heads and tails, marbled paper plates, Contemporary binding.
A restored bit and a flap sheet of the first volume changed, some small foxing.
Exceptional exemplary set in a charming Contemporary binding.
First edition on ordinary paper.
Small spots, not serious, to head of the covers and the endpaper.
Handsome autograph inscription signed by Jean Cocteau to his friend Francis Poulenc : "A Francis Poulenc qui est musique son Jean."
First edition, one of 500 copies, no grand papier (deluxe issue) copies.
Half morocco binding, spine with five raised bands, marbled paper boards framed in gilt, mould made flyleaves and pastedowns, original wrapper covers preserved, binding signed by Thomas Boichot.
Handsome copy signed and inscribed by Paul Verlaine to Émile Le Brun to whom Verlaine dedicated one of his poems (Dédicaces, sonnet XVI).
This copy includes manuscript corrections by Paul Verlaine himself and an exceptional manuscript poem on page 123.
A nice copy, elegantly bound, containing the first printing of the famous Art poétique [Art Poetics], Verlaine's response to Boileau's Art Poétique.
Touching handwritten letter signed by Georges Bataille to Denise Rollin, 37 lines in pencil, small water stain in the top right not affecting the text.
Georges Bataille tries to reassure his companion Denise Rollin: “Je t'en supplie. Il ne faut pas t'inquiéter, mais pas du tout.” “I beg you. You must not worry, not at all.” She moved to Vézelay where Bataille would soon join her. He stayed in Paris where the bombings did not disrupt Parisian lives at all: “Tu n'imagines point à quel point les petits dégâts qu'on voit paraissent insignifiants à côté de la place intacte qu'il y a de tous les côtés. Pendant toute l'alerte, j'ai déjeuné bien tranquille avec mon chef de service de passage à Paris (il vit au front)” “You have no idea how insignificant the little damage you see seems next to the square untouched on all sides. Throughout the alert, I had a very quiet lunch with my head of service passing through Paris (he lives on the front)” Bataille did not give up his job as librarian at the National Library. Suffering from tuberculosis, he was not sent to the front, and he took the opportunity to write several texts at that time, such as Madame Edwarda and Le Coupable.
Further on, he mentions a visit: “Un peu après, Henri Michaux est venu me voir” “A little after, Henri Michaux came to see me” The two men had participated in the magazine Mesures and both had in common being separate from the surrealist nebula. In both of their respective works there is a violent independence and the same tension towards spirituality, a form of mysticism. Bataille had attended the seminary in his youth, and Michaux pleasantly said of him: “Il donne l'impression d'un séminariste sortant furtivement d'une pissotière.” “He gives the impression of a seminarian surreptitiously coming out of a public urinal.”
After this almost trivial news, Bataille embarks on an analysis of his feelings: “Ce que tu me dis dans ta lettre, c'est pour moi ce qui délivre, c'est comme la nudité, tout ce qui se déchire entre toi et moi. Mais, encore une fois, je ne me suis jamais senti aussi près de toi.” “What you tell me in your letter is for me what delivers, it is like nudity, everything that is torn apart between you and me. But, once again, I have never felt so close to you.” He asks his correspondent: “il faut me dire tout. C'est très doux que j'aie vu où tu es, que je connaisse les chemins que tu prendras, les ponts par où tu passeras.” “you must tell me everything. It is very sweet that I have seen you where you are, that I know the roads you will take, the bridges over which you will pass.” Sensuality is never far from the author's feelings: “Dis-moi aussi quelle chambre tu as: pour que je songe à toi dans cette chambre et à tout ce qui arrivera là quand nous serons de nouveau ensemble.” “Also tell me which room you have: so that I may think of you in that room and all that will happen there when we are together again.”
From this and past sensualities, there remain the fruits that are the children. Denise Rollin left for Vézelay in the company of her son Jean, nicknamed Bepsy: “Tu ne me dis rien de ta vie avec Bepsy [...] Bepsy est-il plus calme: moi aussi je l'ai entendu crier dans tes bras.” “You don't tell me anything of your life with Bepsy [...] Is Bepsy calmer: I too heard him screaming in your arms.” Bataille thanks Rollin: “Pour Sylvia je t'ai une immense reconnaissance de m'avoir aidé à changer.” “For Sylvia I am immensely grateful to you for helping me change.” Sylvia Bataille was the first wife of Georges Bataille. They were separated in 1934 but did not divorce until 1946. From this relationship, for the author: “Il ne reste que Laurence et la nécessité d'envisager les choses sans heurt” “This only thing that remains is Laurence and the need to consider things smoothly” Laurence was the daughter born of this marriage in 1930. She joined Bataille, Rollin and Bepsy in 1943 when her father moved to Vézelay.
Rare and highly sought-after first edition (...) of which only a portion of the copies contains a preface (cf. Clouzot). The important account of the lawsuit concerning The Lily of the Valley that precedes the novel was not retained in subsequent editions and is often lacking in a number of the copies published by Werdet.
Copy complete with both the preface and the account of the lawsuit that opposed Balzac to the publisher François Buloz. Contemporary half green sheepskin bindings, smooth spines decorated with gilt romantic typographical motifs, gilt fillets at heads and tails, marbled paper boards, paste paper endpapers and pastedowns, marbled edges, contemporary romantic bindings. Some minor foxing, bookseller's descriptive label pasted at head of front pastedown of the first volume.
Exceptional copy in an elegant contemporary binding.
First definitive editions, partly original.
Bound in red half-shagreen with corners, spine with four raised bands decorated with blind-stamped panels and fillets, the entwined monogram of Jules Hetzel at the foot, uncut copy, contemporary binding.
A few occasional spots of foxing.
Inscribed by the author to Jules Hetzel, “as a token of the author’s friendship.”
In the 1840s, Balzac “contributed to a collective volume illustrated with Grandville’s vignettes, Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux, issued in parts by a new publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel (1814–1886), who was to become a friend and play a crucial role in the consortium of publishers of La Comédie humaine. [Balzac] also assisted Hetzel in drafting texts signed ‘P.-J. Stahl,’ the publisher’s pseudonym.” (Roger Pierrot, Honoré de Balzac, Paris, Fayard, 1994)
An outstanding copy, inscribed by Balzac, in a charming contemporary binding.
Autograph letter signed in black ink, addressed to his mother and dated “Sunday morning the 14th.” A few underlinings, deletions and corrections by the author.
Formerly in the collection of Armand Godoy, n°188.
A fading Baudelaire: “The state of disgust in which I find myself makes everything seem even worse.”
Drawn by the promise of epic fame, Baudelaire went to Belgium in April 1864 for a few conferences and in the hope of a fruitful meeting with the publishers of Les Misérables, Lacroix and Verboeckhoven. The meeting didn't happen, the conferences were a failure and Baudelaire felt boundless resentment for “Poor Belgium”. Nonetheless, despite numerous calls to return to France, the poet would spend the rest of his days in this much-castigated country, living the life of a melancholic bohemian. Aside from a few short stays in Paris, Baudelaire, floored by a stroke that left him paralyzed on one side, would only return to France on 29 June 1866 for a final year of silent agony in a sanatorium.
Written barely a few months after his arrival in Brussels and his initial disappointments, this letter shows us all the principal elements of the mysterious and passionate hatred that would keep the poet definitively in Belgium.
In his final years in France, exhausted by the trial of The Flowers of Evil, humiliated by the failure of his candidacy to the Académie Française, a literary orphan after the bankruptcy of Poulet-Malassis and disinherited as an author by the sale of his translation rights to Michel Lévy, Baudelaire was above all deeply moved by the inevitable decline of Jeanne Duval, his enduring love, while his passion for la Présidente had dried up, her poetic perfection not having withstood the prosaic experience of physical possession. Thus, on 24 April 1864, he decided to flee these “decomposing loves”, of which he could keep only the “form and the divine essence.”
Belgium, so young as a country and seemingly born out of a Francophone Romantic revolution against the Dutch financial yoke, presented itself to the poet phantasmagorically as a place where his own modernity might be acknowledged. A blank page on which he wanted to stamp the power of his language while affirming his economic independence, Belgium was a mirror onto which Baudelaire projected his powerful ideal, but one that would send him tumbling even more violently into the spleen of his final disillusionment.
Published in the Revue de Paris in November 1917, without the sensitive passage about his cold enemas, this emblematic letter evokes all of Baudelaire's work as poet, writer, artist and pamphleteer. The first such reference is via the reassuring, mentor-like figure of the publisher of The Flowers of Evil, Poulet-Malassis: “If I was not so far from him, I really think I'd end up paying so I could take my meals at his.” This is followed by a specific reference to the “venal value” of his Aesthetic Curiosities: “all these articles that I so sadly wrote on painting and poetry” . Baudelaire then confides in his mother his hopes for his latest translations of Poe which, to his great frustration “are not getting published by L'Opinion, La Vie Parisienne, or in Le Monde illustré”. He concludes with his Belgian Letters, which Jules Hetzel had just told him had been, after negotiations with Le Figaro, “received with great pleasure.” Nonetheless, as Baudelaire literally underlined, they were “only to be published when I come back to France.”
His perennially imminent return to France is a leitmotiv of his Belgian correspondence: “Certainly, I think I'll go to Paris on Thursday.” It is nonetheless always put off (“I'm putting off going to Paris until the end of the month”, he corrects himself eight days later), and it seems to stoke up the poet's ferocity towards his new fellow citizens, Baudelaire taking pleasure in actively spreading the worst kinds of rumors about them (involving espionage, parricide, cannibalism, pederasty and other licentious activities. “Tired of always being believed, I put about the rumor that I had killed my father and eaten him... and they believed me! I'm swimming in disgrace like a fish through water.” “Poor Belgium”, in Œuvres complètes, II p. 855)
This eminently poetic attempt to explore the depths of despair in covering himself in hatred is perhaps most clearly seen through his sharing of his culinary difficulties with his “dear, dear mother”, the only sustaining figure who gave him “more than [he]'d expected”.
Read together with some of the finest pages of The Flowers of Evil, this excessive attention to the miseries of his palate reveal far more than simple culinary fussiness.
It is also hardly innocent that Baudelaire begins his recriminations with an exhaustive rejection of all food, with one notable exception: “Everything is bad, save for wine”. This assertion is clearly not without reference to the “vegetal ambrosia”, that sanctified elixir in so many of his poems and above all a friend in misery, which drowns out the poet's sublime crime. “None can understand me. Did one /Among all those stupid drunkards / Ever dream in his morbid nights / Of making a shroud of wine?”.
“Bread is bad”. If wine is the incorruptible soul of a poet, bread, here underlined by the author, is his innocent and mortal flesh. “In the bread and wine intended for their mouths / They mix ashes and impure spit”, as Baudelaire says in Benediction. This is the poet-child who everywhere, in hotels, restaurants, English taverns, “suffers from this impossible communion of elements and thus presents his mother with an even more symbolic vision of his misery”.
Nonetheless, the man is always present, his carnal desires hidden beneath the misery of his condition. “Meat is not bad in itself. It becomes bad in the manner of its cooking.” How can we not, behind the apparently prosaic nature of this culinary comment, recognize the most permanent of Baudelaire's metaphors, present throughout the poet's work – A Carcass, To She Who is Too Gay, A Martyr, Women Doomed – the female body transformed by death?
“The sun shone down upon that putrescence,
As if to roast it to a turn,
And to give back a hundredfold to great Nature
The elements she had combined”
“People who live at home live less badly,” he continues, but Baudelaire doesn't want to be comforted and his complaining is nothing but an expression of the perfect correlations between his physical condition and this final poetical experience.
Of course, Belgium was not really to blame, but it was only to his mother that Baudelaire could make this rare and moving confession: “I must say, by the by, that the state of disgust in
which I find myself makes everything seem even worse.”
Essentially, all the aggression he was to pour out on these cursed kinspeople was nothing but the echo of an older rancor that, in 1863, consumed his “heart laid bare.” To his mother's recriminations at finding her son's notes, Baudelaire replied, on 5 June: “Well! Yes, this much-wished for book will be a book of recriminations...I will turn on the whole of France my very real talent for impertinence. I need revenge like a tired man needs his bath.”
The “cold laudanum enemas” of Belgium were to be that bath for the tired poet, who found an occasion to combat, with a supreme wrath, this existential “disgust”. In the middle of a paragraph – the very one that would be cut by the Revue Française – Baudelaire attributes this, without naming the disease, to syphilis: “What is insupportable in these intestinal and stomach complaints is the physical weakness and the spiritual sadness that result from them.”
Madame Aupick's immediate concern at these all too sudden confidences led Baudelaire to lie to her about his actual state of health, which continued to get worse. Hence, in his following letter: “It was terribly wrong of me to talk to you about my Belgian health, since it affected you so deeply...Generally speaking, I'm in excellent health...That I have a few little problems...so what? That is the general lot. As for my trouble, I can only repeat that I have seen other Frenchmen suffer the same way, being unable to adapt to this vicious climate...And in any case, I won't be staying long.”
A superb autograph letter from a son to his mother, subtly revealing the poetical reasons for his final self-imposed exile, the inverted mirror of the first, enforced, wandering of his youth in the Mascarene Islands, the writer's only two voyages.
If the young man could somehow – we don't know how – escape to the far-off Reunion island, the old man nonetheless didn't dare leave Belgium, which was so close, and this melancholic letter augured the end of his days spent by the North Sea, as somber as his initial trip to the South Seas had been bright.
The complete original manuscript of one of Sade's first works, ruled in pencil throughout, comprising 40 leaves written recto and verso. This manuscript, like the other extant items from the Marquis, was dictated to a scribe and corrected by Sade himself.
Contemporary green paper wrappers with a small lack to middle of spine. Ink title, partly erased, to upper cover: 9/ Net et corrigé en août 1808 – bon brouillon. Les Antiquaires. Comédie en prose en 1 acte [Copied and corrected August 1808 – a good draft. The Antiquaries. A prose comedy in 1 Act]. This title is repeated on the verso of the upper cover.
Numerous manuscript corrections, annotations and deletions in Sade's hand, principally adding blocking, and rich in both stage and acting directions.
Written in 1776 and re-copied at Charenton in 1808, and most likely augmented at the time with various topical references – notably including an allusion to Napoleon, “of whom he was hoping, in vain, to receive permission to leave the asylum at Charenton as a free man” (p.94) – Les Antiquaires is one of the first theatrical pieces written by the Marquis and therefore one of his first literary works overall, written eight years before the Dialogue entre un prêtre et un moribond [Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man].
Though the precise dating of these pieces is made difficult due to the lack of the original manuscripts, several clues have allowed bibliographers to date the initial composition of this piece to 1776, possibly with a corrected version during the Revolution and a few final changes at the time of this last edit, which is today the only extant manuscript of this play.
These clues include the status of the Jewish and English characters, the style of the dialogues, and Sade's correspondence with theatres; the strongest clue being biographical in nature.
Les Antiquaires can essentially be considered the true “theatrical version” of Sade's Voyage en Italie with which it shows a sustained intertextuality.
The play is about an antiquary – in the 18th century sense of the term, which is to say a learned devotee of Classical culture – who wants to marry off his daughter to a friend with the same passion, who nonetheless finds a way of convincing him to let her marry her young lover.
Whether it be in the learned dialogues of the antiquaries or in their eccentric parody by the young lover imitating them, Sade draws upon his own experience and observations from his travels, which he expands or twists, according to the viewpoint of his various characters. Hence, the description of Mount Etna by the lover – Delcour – is a parody of Sade's detailed description of the Pietra Malla volcano, and the made-up “subterranean tunnel linking Etna to America” is directly inspired by the tunnel of the Crypta Neapolitana, described by Sade in his Voyage. The Marquis would reach back to this same experience of volcanoes in one of the most famous scenes in his Histoire de Juliette.
Barely returned from his latest grand tour and almost at the same time as writing his passionate and detailed account of the experience, Sade was thus also writing a satirical version of his own work (until his problems with the military authorities). The work is at the same time a social critique of pointless erudition and a self-mockery of his own passion for history and of his “zeal to see everything, his insatiable curiosity” (cf. Maurice Lever, preface to Voyage en Italie).
This virulent satire is paradoxically twinned with a very erudite display of the author's knowledge of the latest architectural discoveries and the major contemporary questions in the field.
This was, in fact, the element criticized by the two heads of theatres to whom Sade sent the play for consideration, most likely during 1791 or 1792: “The work is well-written. It shows the author's spirit and depth of knowledge, but it's too serious, too scientific” (Théâtre du Palais-Royal); “Less display of knowledge, more ridicule...would be needed to stage Les Antiquaires. The author, who shows himself very learned, is bound to come round to this idea himself” (Théâtre de Bondi).
Though it seems that the version critiqued above was only an initial iteration and that Sade took into account these comments and corrected the faults in the surviving work, it would appear that the critiques arose from a failure to understand what makes this piece special.
For, despite a very traditional structure of an inter-generational conflict pitting an obtuse, obsessive, and naïve father against a quixotic and free-spirited youth, the play does not come down one way or the other in judgment and the older characters are not, in the end, fooled by the tricks and stratagems of the young couple, who themselves end up conceding their elders a certain amount of authority and respect for their knowledge.
As the play is heavily inspired by Molière, it is as a worthy heir of Diderot's that Sade presents this new battle between the Ancients and the Moderns, which is to say the antiquary versus the philosopher, as described by Jean Seznec in his Essais sur Diderot et l'Antiquité [Essays on Diderot and Antiquity].
D'Alembert, in his preliminary discourse in the Encyclopedia, takes a definite position on this issue: “That is why, being of unequal merit, a Scholar is far less useful than a Philosopher.” Diderot, more restrained, lists in the article on “erudition” the boons and limits of the two intellectual positions. It's clearly this heritage with which the young Sade claims communion, and his play shows “the paradoxes of this debate with an irresistible satirical virtuosity” (S. Dangeville). The author defines his position in the battle between the antiquaries and the philosophers through the figure of Delcourt: “Eh mais vraiment il me serait difficile de passer pour un [savant]. J'ai pu acquérir toutes les connaissances d'un homme de mon état, sans néanmoins avoir étudié les sciences que Monsieur votre Père et ses amis cultivent depuis si longtemps.” [“Ah, but really, it would be difficult to call myself a scholar. I've managed to pick up all the knowledge fit for a man of my station without ever having studied the sciences that your noble father and his friends have been cultivating so long.”]
The response of the maid, Cornaline, demonstrates on her part a conscious freedom when faced with the erudition that seems both to herald and outline the atypical philosophy and perversion of the values of the future author of the 120 Days of Sodom: “Fussiez-vous vous-même aussi profond qu'eux, je ne veux pas que vous le paraissiez; battez la campagne, faites des anachronismes, petit à petit on se méfiera de vous, on soupçonnera du mystère et de là même naitre et l'instant de vous dévoiler et la nécessité de ne plus feindre.” [“If you yourself were as profound as they, I would not have you seem it; daydreaming, stuck in anachronisms, one would soon start to mistrust you, suspecting you of some secret and thus a need to unmask yourself and no longer have to feign something you are not.”]
This analogy of excess to the point of disbelief, still limited in 1776 to the field of knowledge, could very well have been the basis for a philosophy that would develop during the apocalyptic upheavals, of a need to “unmask [ourselves] and no longer have to feign something [we] are not”.
This first literary exploit, whose importance Gilbert Lely played down, in actual fact shows an author who is far more experienced than he seems at first sight. Certainly, as Sylvie Dangeville points out, Les Antiquaires clearly belongs to the young Marquis' ‘apprenticeship' in writing for the theatre. She cites by way of example the very powerful influence of the Fourberies de Scapin, the Malade Imaginaire and the Femmes Savantes on the action of Les Antiquaires.
Nonetheless, let us not forget that Sade drew only very slightly on the dramatic structure of these plays, and much more heavily – to excess, once again! – on the comic potential of situations.
In presenting to the audience characters hidden in sacks and beaten, lovers springing up out of crates about to be burned and predatory women (“Un loup dans mon enfance se jeta sur moi et depuis lors j'entre quelque fois dans des accès de fureur; je crois que je vous dévorerais, Monsieur [A wolf attacked me in my youth and since then I occasionally have fits of fury; I think I will eat you up, Monsieur].”), Sade is already and entirely Sade.
Provenance: family archives.
First complete collected edition and first illustrated edition. The first edition of Dom Garcie de Navarre, L'Impromptu de Versailles, Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre, Les Amans magnifiques, and La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas. With thirty copper engraved illustrations by Jean Sauvé after Pierre Brassart, 9 of them included in the pagination.
19th-century red full morocco binding, spines with five raised bands, date gilt at foot, double gilt fillets to edges of covers and spine-ends, large inned gilt dentelle, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Bindings signed M. Lortic.
An exceptional copy of the famous 1682 edition housed in a very elegant binding by Marcelin Lortic, who succeeded his father Pierre-Marcellin Lortic - Baudelaire's binder.
Partly first edition, gathering the most famous speeches by Victor Hugo, including some of his most memorable addresses delivered at the tribune of the Legislative Assembly—most notably the speech on constitutional revision and the powerful plea he gave at the trial of his son, on 11 June 1851, before the Cour d'assises of the Seine, in defense of the inviolability of human life. Spurious mention of “eighth edition.”
Complete with the rare portrait of the author by Masson printed on China paper, as frontispiece.
Scattered occasional foxing.
Precious inscribed copy signed by Victor Hugo to Juliette Drouet : « à mon pauvre doux ange aimé. V. »
A treasured copy belonging to Victor Hugo’s muse and mistress. This moving and remorseful dedication is Hugo’s response to the tragedy Juliette endured that same year, having just discovered he had been unfaithful for seven years with Léonie Biard. In June 1851, Biard sent Juliette the letters Victor had written to her. In July, Hugo swore eternal fidelity to Juliette, and in August inscribed this plea for a more compassionate justice to her.
In the autumn, Juliette demanded that Hugo meet Madame Biard to formally end the affair—a meeting she choreographed in every detail, and to which Hugo complied.
Provenance: libraries of Pierre Duché (1972, no. 75) and Philippe Zoummeroff (2001, no. 71).
First edition, an ordinary paper copy.
Contemporary green half shagreen, marbled paper boards, spine with five raised bands and gilt flowers, speckled edges.
With the autograph signatures of every author of the "Médan group" involved in the writing of this famous collection of short stories: Guy de Maupassant, Emile Zola, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Léon Hennique, Paul Alexis and Henri Céard on the first endpaper.
A very good and rare copy in a strictly contemporary binding.
First edition, an advance (service de presse) copy.
Very precious and moving autograph inscription signed and dated by Maurice Blanchot to his mother and sister: "Personne ne reçoit tant de Dieu que celui qui est entièrement mort. Saint Grégoire. Pour sa chère maman et sa vieille Marg, en toute affection. Maurice [No one receives God so fully as someone who is entirely dead. Saint Gregory. For his darling mother and old Marg, with all love. Maurice]."
Three small wormholes and a clear dampstain to margin of upper cover, one joint cracked at foot.
Retaining its prière d'insérer.
First edition, one of 50 copies on vergé de Hollande, only deluxe issue (with 10 copies on papier Chine).
Contemporary dark red shagreen, probably a publisher's binding, spine in six compartments with gilt fleurons, covers with double gilt fillet frame and gilt fleurons to corners, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, edge of covers ruled in gilt, gilt roulette to head-pieces, top edge gilt, slipcase edged in dark red shagreen.
A very rare and handsome copy perfectly set in a contemporary binding.
