A Letter to Father Christmas…
And to Mommy Deerest.

What if the pleasure of writing started from that very first letter we sent to Santa as a child?  Just starting to read and write, we set out on our journeys as secret and passionate authors.

What if our fascination for the correspondence of writers and artists owed something to this precious memory, both intimate and common, of our own awakening to the art of writing letters?

What if all letters, written as friends or lovers were rewrites of this original missive, carefully thought, beautifully crafted, duly addressed, rigorously stamped and proudly posted to a bearded recipient from the North Pole...



To inaugurate this month devoted to Christmas lists and weekly suggestions for unique, personal, and precious gifts, Le Feu Follet pays tribute to beautiful letters by revealing the poetic secrets of a deeply melancholic and raw letter from a son exiled from his mother, but whose "mud" conceals the secret alchemy of Baudelairean "gold".

Autograph letter signed addressed to his mother by a fading Baudelaire: “L'état de dégoût où je suis me fait trouver toute chose encore plus mauvaise” 
N. p. [Bruxelles] Sunday morning 14 [August 1864], 13,4 x 20,6 cm, 3 pages on a folded leave
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.

On April 3, 1862, Victor Hugo succeeded, from his English rock, in the feat of publishing simultaneously and in the four corners of the world the most important humanist novel of the century. However, even today, booksellers and bibliographers doubt the success of this tour de force and continue to quarrel over the precedence of one publication over another.

False testimonies (from Adèle), erroneous information (from gazettes), abusive interpretations (from bibliographers), failing memory (from Hugo) and disorderly precipitation (from Meurice and Vacquerie) against a background of exacerbated rivalry (between Lacroix and Pagnerre), the he Feu Follet investigation takes you through the twists and turns of an exceptional editorial adventure, the source of one of the most tenacious bibliographical misunderstandings, wrongly attributing precedence to the Belgian edition over the French and ignoring the real difference between the Lacroix and la Pagnerre: the text supplement.
Let's listen again to the voice of the master Hugo and his love for the animals that he mirrored to each character in Les Misérables: Valjean-Madeleine's good bear, Fantine the mouse, Cosette the lark and above all Javert, "this dog son of 'a female wolf "…
Edition-originale.com offers you this week its literary bestiary.

For this hundredth anniversary of the disappearance of Proust, the investigators of Le Feu Follet takes you to the side of Plaisirs et des Jours in search of a lost text by young Marcel, disguised as an obscure quotation on the copy of the painter Jean Béraud.

For this hundredth anniversary of the disappearance of Proust, the investigation of Le Feu Follet takes you to the side of Plaisirs et des Jours in search of a lost text by young Marcel, disguised as an obscure quotation on the copy of the painter Jean Béraud.

The new catalog by Le Feu Follet pays tribute to the body in motion: staged by Loïs Hutton, celebrated by Pavlova, painted by Barbier, sketched by Picabia, photographed by Allégret, illustrated by Iacovleff, exhibited by Colette…
Enough to make Édith Piaf tourner la tête and Cloots, Brissot's and Olympe de Gouges' head fall.

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.