Gift Ideas – Manuscripts & Letters

First edition, one of 110 numbered copies on Rives laid paper.
Half red morocco binding, smooth spine, gilt date at foot, boards covered with abstract patterned paper, red paper endpapers and pastedowns, covers and spine preserved, top edge gilt, signed binding by P. Goy & C. Vilaine.
Autograph inscription signed by Jean Cocteau to a friend named Roger enhanced with a drawing in blue ink representing the face of a young man facing forward.

Autograph letter signed by Emile Zola addressed to Henry Fouquier, written in black ink on a bifolium. Usual folds from mailing.
This letter was transcribed in the complete correspondence of Emile Zola published by the CNRS and the Presses de l'Université de Montréal.

Handwritten signed letter addressed to Docteur Francis Mars: "j'ai du mal à vous pardonner le mal que vous vous êtes fait à vous-même !” “I find it difficult to forgive you for the harm you have done to yourself!”
Paris 17 November 1966, 20.7 x 13.5 cm, one page on a leaf, envelope attached

Handwritten letter signed by Natalie Clifford Barney addressed to Doctor Francis Mars, a few lines written in black in on a leaf of headed paper from 20 rue Jacob (Paris VI^e), envelope attached. Central fold from having been sent.
"Cher ami Francis, j'ai du mal à vous pardonner le mal que vous vous êtes fait à vous-même ! Natalie (PS: Je ne serai à Nice que vers le 5...

Autograph letter signed by Charles Baudelaire to Narcisse Ancelle, written in black ink on a sheet of blue paper.

Folds from mailing, three minute pinholes not affecting the text.

This letter was transcribed in the Complete Works volume 11 published in 1949 by L. Conard.

A moving letter from Brussels addressed to the celebrated family notary who became in 1844 Charles's legal guardian, charged with managing his annuity and his exponential debts. A...

Ink and watercolour portrait of the poet Paul Verlaine by his friend Marie Crance, bearing the artist's signature and the handwritten caption “Paul Verlaine à l'hôpital”.

A single sheet, presented in a frame with a mount. An inscription on the back of the frame—“written in the margin (by the framer): ‘For Messrs. Thénot and Lercey, 25 April 1894’”—provides a likely terminus post quem for the drawing.
 
Marie Crance (1860–1945), nicknamed Marie-aux-fleurs, was at the time the companion of the illustrator Frédéric-Auguste Cazals, whom she married in 1912. A laundress, maid, and occasional singer in the poet’s favourite...

First edition printed in 310 copies, ours being one of 285 numbered copies on Auvergne paper.

Our copy is enhanced with an original drawing signed by Léon Courbouleix. 
Bradel binding in full vellum, smooth spine decorated with an original drawing and pen title, covers decorated with drawings by Gaston Hoffmann, marbled paper slipcase.
Very handsome work entirely engraved with etching, printed on hand press by Léon Courbouleix and bound in a very beautiful painted binding by Gaston Hoffmann.

Handwritten letter signed by Samuel Beckett addressed to Alain Bosquet.
Some lines written in black ink on watermarked paper.
“I do not have the slightest novelty to offer you [...] I very much regret.”

"Léger comme une antilope / Il dansait, fumant son clope / Une java pleine de syncopes / Elle en eut le coeur cassé"

Fine autograph letter signed by Colette addressed to her friend Bolette Natanson. Two pages written in ink on blue headed paper from the Marignan building, the writer's residence between 1936 and 1938. Transverse folds inherent to the folding of the letter for mailing.
Moving letter addressed by Colette to her close friend following the death of her father Alexandre Natanson: "[...] ce dimanche va être un dimanche bien pénible. Je t'écris à l'heure juste où tu conduis ton père." ["this Sunday is going to be a very painful Sunday. I am writing to you at the very moment when you are laying your father to rest."] Conscious of the suffering and...

Autograph letter card signed by the painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes to the engraver Emile Boilvin.
The painter addresses a resigning member of the Société nationale des beaux-arts, which Puvis de Chavannes had founded and was in charge of the Salon du Champ de Mars, a dissident event from the official Salon des artistes français: "Cher Monsieur Boilvin, c'est avec le plus vif regret que je vous vois vous séparer d'une société où vous ne comptiez que des admirateurs et des amis. Qu'il soit fait selon votre désir, mais encore une fois, votre démission nous cause à tous un réel chagrin. Cordialement, P. Puvis de Chavannes" ["Dear Mr. Boilvin, it is with the...

Autograph manuscript of 12 pages on squared sheets, written in blue ink, with numerous passages underlined.
A previously unpublished set of reflections by Jean-Paul Sartre on social structure and bourgeois ideology, probably written in 1952 as part of a projected screenplay on the revolutionary period. This series of interior dialogues on the nature of individual and collective power constitutes an early draft of the ideas later developed in his 1960 masterpiece, Critique of Dialectical Reason. Through the example of the French Revolution and the Terror, Sartre questions the role of the citizen and of property, drawing on the writings of Kant, Marx...

Long autograph letter by Stendhal, addressed to his sister Pauline, written in fine handwriting with black ink.
Address of Stendhal's father, where his sister resides, in Grenoble, with the stamp "n°51 Grande Armée." Red wax seal bearing Stendhal's coat of arms.
Several original folds, inherent to postal delivery. A paper loss due to the unsealing of the letter has been skillfully restored. Published in his Correspondance (ed. Henri Martineau), Paris, Le Divan, 1933, vol. 3, no. 262 A, pp. 26-29.
A very beautiful letter, filled with romantic passion, blending childhood nostalgia with sentimental tales, and foreshadowing...

Handwritten manuscript signed by the choreographer Maurice Béjart. 

10 leaves written in blue pen. Handwritten pagination.
Maurice Béjart's handwritten proofs for his book Béjart-theâtre: A-6-Roc (éditions Plume, 1992), about his play A-6-Roc, first performed in the same year at the Vidy theatre in Lausanne.
After the foundation of “Béjart Ballet Lausanne” and his definitive departure from Belgium in 1987, Béjart continues to stage operas, produce films and publish several books (novel, memories, personal diary...). In addition, he wrote and directed his third play A-6-Roc performed in Lausanne in 1992, which he published...

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...

Original ink on cartridge paper, signed in ink on the lower right with Henri Michaux's monogram “HM.” A tiny tear, causing no effect, at the top of the leaf.
The drawing has been authenticated by M. Franck Leibovici, Henri Michaux's beneficiary, and will be entered into the catalogue raisonné in preparation.

Handwritten signed postcard from Alexander Calder to Juan Luis Buñuel, written in English in ballpoint pen and blue felt-tip. Saché postmark (Indre-et-Loire). Paris address of Juan Luis Buñuel.
Card perforated with two holes at the top. Photograph of one of Calder's stabiles on the front.
Provenance: Buñuel family archives.
In 1939, Luis Buñuel, who had just received an offer to work in Hollywood, decided, with his wife and child, to leave the chaotic situation in Europe to go and live the American Dream. The penniless Buñuels initially spent a few precarious months living in New York. Luis Buñuel found himself forced to ask Dali—his longstanding friend in exile...

Autograph letter signed by Charles Baudelaire, written in pencil and addressed to his mother. Dry-stamped stationery of the Grand Hôtel Voltaire, Faubourg Saint-Germain. Address to Madame Aupick in Honfleur (Calvados) in the author's hand, together with several postal markings dated 13 and 14 July 1858. Several underlinings, deletions and corrections by Baudelaire. Trace of a wax seal bearing Charles Baudelaire's initials in pencil, probably in the author's hand. A small portion of the second leaf has been excised, with no loss of text.
This letter was first published in the Revue de Paris on 15 September 1917.
From the former collection of...

First edition, for which no copies on larger paper were produced.
A pleasing copy, with press clippings laid in.
Exceptional autograph presentation copy inscribed in English by Claude Lévi-Strauss to the anthropologist Raymond Firth.