Châtiments

First true edition as an earlier, truncated and inaccurate edition of this book had already appeared the same year in Brussels.
Copy in the original wrappers, as issued. Trace of a crease to the lower right corner of the front wrapper.

One of Hugo's masterpieces, containing some of the most powerful and sarcastic poems of the century. The emperor so reviled is treated here more mercilessly, if that is possible, than in Napoléon le Petit.

"[this edition] would enjoy only a modest but colourful circulation, since the books and offprints of the poems were printed on onionskin paper and smuggled across the Franco-Belgian border in boot heels or hatboxes. An "official" edition accompanied this publication, but it was censored and expurgated: words, and even entire stanzas, were left blank. Ostensibly published, it bore the imprint "Bruxelles, Henri Samuel et Cie, rue des Secours, 7, et chez tous les libraires". [...] he returned accompanied by his poetic tomb, the Châtiments, a testament-book, a living homage paid to a poetic tradition, an inscription within History, and a hymn to a "land where hope shines":