"My irascibility borders on madness..."

Gustave FLAUBERT

Madame Bovary

Name: Gustave FLAUBERT • with an autograph letter signed by Flaubert to his niece • Madame Bovary • Autograph • 1857
Brand: Michel Lévy
SKU: 89986
Price: 8500 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Gustave FLAUBERT

with an autograph letter signed by Flaubert to his niece

Michel Lévy frères|Paris 1857 ; [26 mars 1872] ; 11 janvier 1931 |12 x 18.50 cm|2 volumes reliés et deux lettres autographes

€8,500

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⬨ 89986

First edition, first issue with all the features of first issue copies including the misprint "Sénart" on the dedication leaf.
Dark green half-shagreen binding, spines with four raised bands decorated with double gilt-tooled compartments with gilt roundels at the corners, very minor restoration to the headbands, marbled paper boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, contemporary bindings.
With an exceptionally added autograph letter signed by Gustave Flaubert to his niece Caroline Commanville, affectionately known as "Loulou", on one page of a bifolium, pasted to a flyleaf of the first volume:

"Mardi 11h. [26 mars 1872]

Mon Loulou, ta gdmère a très bien supporté le voyage et, malgré l'abominable état où est plongé Croisset, son humeur est bonne. Je n'en dirais pas autant de la mienne. Mon irascibilité touche à la démence. Je vais m'habiller pour aller à Rouen payer des notes - choisir des papiers - & faire une visite à l'hôtel dieu. J'ai couché dans ta chambre. On ne sait pas comment se retourner dans la maison - qui pue violemment - et nous n'avons ni femme de ménage - ni cuisinière. Je t'embrasse ainsi qu'Ernest
Ton vieux - peu gai

GFlaubert."

"Tuesday, 11 o'clock. [26 March 1872]

My Loulou, your gdmother bore the journey very well and, despite the appalling state in which Croisset finds itself, her spirits are good. I cannot say the same of mine. My irascibility borders on madness. I am going to dress and head to Rouen to settle some bills - choose papers - & pay a visit to the Hôtel-Dieu. I slept in your room. One cannot turn around in the house - which reeks dreadfully - and we have neither a housekeeper nor a cook. I embrace you as well as Ernest. Your old man - in poor spirits.

GFlaubert."

On the facing pastedown is another letter by Heeckeren, dated 11 January 1931, providing details regarding Flaubert's letter: "Mon cher ami, Loulou, c'est la nièce de Flaubert et c'est elle-même qui remis cet autographe à ma mère ; c'est elle aussi qui écrivit au crayon la date : 1872... [...]"

The recipient of this letter Caroline Commanville, was the daughter of Flaubert's sister who died within days of giving birth to her, and was almost immediately abandoned by her father. She was raised by her grandmother and her uncle, and remained throughout Flaubert's life the daughter he never had.

In this angry-sounding letter, Flaubert makes no effort to conceal his wretched mood. Wholly absorbed in the writing of La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, his relationship with Michel Lévy, the publisher of Madame Bovary, had deteriorated severely. Lévy had also published Salammbô in 1862 and L'Éducation sentimentale in 1869. The latter had proved commercially disappointing. His publisher was now reluctant to issue the poetry of Louis Bouilhet, Flaubert's late and beloved friend. Moreover, Flaubert had long felt that Lévy had grown wealthy on the success of Bovary: the rupture was complete by 1872, and Flaubert would turn to Charpentier in 1873 for the last reissue of Madame Bovary.

At the time of writing, Flaubert had returned to Croisset with his ailing mother. She died only a few days later, on 6 April 1872. Upon the writer's own death in 1880, Caroline became the custodian of all his manuscripts and edited the first published edition of his letters in 1887.

The letter is published in Correspondance, Louis Conard, 1930, vol. 6, p. 359-360, and in the Correspondance, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, vol. IV, p. 501. Both the Flaubert letter and the Heeckeren ex-dono letter are included in the digital edition of Flaubert's Correspondance by the Université de Rouen Normandie.