Les misérables

First edition, without edition statement, published simultaneously with the Paris edition issued by Pagnerre.

Contemporary red half-morocco bindings, smooth spines decorated with double gilt fillets, broad blind fillets and gilt floral tools, gilt rolls at head and foot, slight rubbing to two headcaps, red cloth boards decorated with blind-stamped floral motifs, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, a few corners slightly bumped, a few minor nicks to some edges, contemporary bindings.
Some foxing and pale marginal staining, as usual, a small black ink stain in the margins of one gathering in the second volume, a slight loss to the upper right-hand corner of the first leaves of the sixth volume.

The first edition of Les Misérables was legally established by three different publishers: Pagnerre in France, Lacroix in Belgium, and Steinacker in Germany, under the aegis of the official publisher A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven & Cie.
One of the two first editions published on 3 April 1862, simultaneously in Brussels by Lacroix and Verboeckhoven and in Paris by Pagnerre.
The question of whether one edition should take precedence over the other has long exercised bibliophiles, and bibliographers have remained divided over this thorny issue. Carteret and Vicaire, for example, maintained that the Paris edition should be preferred, while Vanderem and Clouzot accorded priority to the Belgian edition. More than a simple matter of chronology, this bibliographical dispute reveals the complexity of the very notion of a first edition and the symbolic importance it assumes in literary history, particularly in the case of this monumental work, one of the great landmarks of world literature.
Strangely, although the question has never truly been settled, the Brussels edition is now commonly described as preceding the Paris edition, while the Leipzig edition is simply ignored. Les Misérables is therefore often said to have appeared on 30 or 31 March from Lacroix and on 3 April from Pagnerre.
The arguments supporting this alleged Belgian priority are, however, all open to challenge, and as early as 1936 Georges Blaizot had demonstrated their fragility.
The first argument rests on a letter from Victor Hugo to Lacroix dating from 1865, in which the poet himself described the Belgian edition as « princeps »: « Typographiquement, il faut se régler en tout sur l'édition belge princeps des Misérables, en dilatant plutôt qu'en resserrant », he wrote with regard to Les Travailleurs de la mer, which was to appear in 1866. Yet Hugo's use of this term is in no way a bibliographical indication, as Georges Blaizot explained when denouncing the overinterpretation of P. de Lacretelle and Dr Michaux: « Le poète précise un point, un seul, très simple, très clair, très précis : l'édition belge princeps (c'est-à-dire la première parue des éditions belges) doit servir de type aux éditions futures. Il dit cela, il dit bien cela, il ne dit que cela. » (Georges Blaizot in Le Bulletin du bibliophile et du bibliothécaire, 1936). The celebrated octavo edition was in fact followed by a more modest duodecimo edition in October of the same year.
The second argument is more substantial. It is based on a letter from Adèle Hugo to her husband recounting the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the French publication, brought forward by four days.
This letter was partially reproduced in 1904 in the complete works published by Meurice and Simon, with the supposed date « [31 mars 1862] ». Adèle explains the reasons behind the hurried French publication: « Auguste [Vacquerie] nous apprend que Les Misérables paraissent sous trois jours. Étonnement mêlé de satisfaction. Auguste me raconte qu'ils comptaient faire paraître Les Misérables le 7 avril ; que le matin [Noël] Parfait était accouru effaré chez [Paul] Meurice lui dire qu'il sortait de voir aux mains de [Paul] Siraudin, un exemplaire des Misérables qu'il avait acheté la veille à Bruxelles. »
This testimony, together with the dating of the letter in the editors' notes, was undoubtedly at the origin of the claim that the Belgian publication took precedence. It is indeed indisputable that on that date the French edition had not yet appeared, since the printer Claye did not deposit the two Paris volumes at the Archives nationales until the following day, 1 April 1862. In this sense, Lacroix's edition would therefore genuinely be « princeps ».
Adèle's letter, however, was not written on 31 March, but over three days: « commencée dimanche (donc le 30 mars) et finie aujourd'hui [mardi] premier avril ». It would therefore imply the existence of stitched copies in Brussels as early as 29 March (and certainly not the 30th, which was a Sunday). Yet at that very moment Hugo and Lacroix were engaged in an intense correspondence to settle the delicate question of the forthcoming publication date: « Mon cher maître, écrivait Lacroix le 30 mars, nous avons tout combiné pour le 4 avril, (...) il faut qu'à Paris l'ouvrage paraisse aussi cette semaine ». Hugo, for his part, warned his publisher on 1 April: « on prétend que le livre qui ne peut (...) paraître à Paris que le 7, paraîtra le 3 partout ; de sorte que Paris, cœur du succès, serait servi le dernier. Ce serait là une faute incalculable. Paris servi après tout le monde, c'est le succès attaqué à sa source ».
While in Paris Meurice, Vacquerie and Pagnerre hastened the French publication in order to counter the Belgians, who « ont tenté de jouer un tour » on the French, as Adèle reported to her husband, in Guernsey Hugo took a firmer tone with his publisher, stressing the importance of the French edition: « la simultanéité, bien ; mais s'il devait y avoir une priorité, c'était pour Paris. »
What, then, of a Brussels publication in March? No evidence other than the Siraudin episode (related by Adèle, who had it from Vacquerie recounting Parfait's words to Meurice) seriously confirms this hypothesis. The Belgian newspapers, which were a major concern for the Paris circle — « les journaux de Paris ne se soucieraient pas d'annoncer ce livre (...) après les journaux belges et de devenir leur déversoir et leur succursale » — still contained no real notice of this eagerly awaited work, with the exception of L'Indépendance Belge, which successively announced on 30 March: « En vente chez tous les libraires », and on 1 April: « Demain paraît enfin la première partie des Misérables ». In accordance with Hugo's publishing strategy, the first extracts from the work were not published until 2 April, notably in Le Temps, which had announced since the previous day a simultaneous publication in France and Belgium on 4 April, and in Le Journal des Débats, where the article signed by Jules Janin was in fact written by Meurice, owing to the urgency described by Adèle: « Je ne puis parler du livre ce soir puisque je ne le connais pas, dit Janin, faites vous-même la chose, Meurice. ».
Was there in fact a Belgian publication in March, or were the few copies that undoubtedly circulated before the official and simultaneous publication in France and Belgium merely an isolated and insignificant accident? A study of Hugo's correspondence shows that, rather than a Belgian « tour », the matter was simply a confusion of dates attributable to... Victor Hugo himself. Hugo had in fact conveyed to Vacquerie and Meurice the mistaken intention of a simultaneous publication on 7 April, even though he had urged Lacroix to have everything ready for 4 April. He thus sowed doubt and misunderstanding between the two publishers. (cf. Bernard Leuilliot, Victor Hugo publie les Misérables, p. 240)
The first two volumes, entitled Fantine, were finally placed on sale on 3 April in France, Belgium, Germany, and numerous other countries that had received copies printed by Lacroix. Siraudin's copy was probably one of those stitched copies prepared in advance for shipment as far as Latin America. Lacroix had indeed informed Hugo on 30 March: « tout est tiré, tout était broché et les expéditions pour l'étranger en partie faites ».
There is therefore no reason to suppose any priority of one edition over the other. And it was in perfect harmony that Adèle, Charles, Paul de Saint-Victor, Vacquerie, Lacroix and Pagnerre celebrated on the evening of 3 April at Meurice's home the « éclatante victoire simultanée en tous pays, le jour même de la mise en vente à Paris, à Bruxelles, à Londres, à Milan, à Naples, à St. Pétersbourg », as Lacroix wrote that very evening to the author who had just secured his place in publishing history.
The success of these first two volumes was such that, just as Victor Hugo had feared, Pagnerre's printing — 6,000 copies according to Hovasse and 7,000 according to L. C. Michel in the Revue anecdotique of 15 April 1862 — sold out extremely quickly: « Le 6, on eût battu toutes les librairies de la rive gauche et de la rive droite, pour en trouver un exemplaire ». A thousand copies were therefore taken from the 5,000 Brussels copies intended for the Belgian and foreign markets in order to create a spurious French « deuxième édition », which was in reality the Belgian first edition with a new title-page. But by 10 April Pagnerre was obliged to undertake a new printing, ready by the 17th thanks to the stereotypes prudently made by the printer Claye during the first impression. Only the title-pages were printed « sur le mobile » in red and black, with antique capitals described as « un des joyaux de son matériel typographique ». In all, if one accepts the probably over-optimistic figures cited by Hovasse from the Revue anecdotique and the publishers' correspondence, the various printings of this first part amounted to nearly 15,000 copies bearing the Paris imprint and 12,000 bearing the Brussels imprint, in addition to 3,000 copies printed in Leipzig by Steinacker. This latter edition, issued in a smaller format and likewise appearing from 3 April, undoubtedly deserves greater attention, since in addition to forming part of the first-edition publication, it answered Hugo's urgent desire to make a cheap edition immediately available so that everyone might have access to his work, as Lacroix would shortly afterwards do. The second and third parts, however, appeared with a slight delay, on 15 May in Paris and between 16 and 19 May in Brussels, owing to an unfortunate accident involving a steam-powered machine (cf. letter from Lacroix to Hugo dated 11 May 1862). Fortunately, on 30 June Brussels and Paris were perfectly synchronised for the publication of the final four volumes.
Yet the concept of a first edition is not merely a matter of date. Defenders of the Belgian thesis point out that the corrected proofs were sent to Brussels and that, as Vicaire paradoxically asserted, Pagnerre was merely the « dépositaire » of the true and sole publisher, Lacroix et Verboeckhoven & Cie.
As early as 1936, Georges Blaizot replied in Le Bulletin du bibliophile that Pagnerre had in no sense taken Lacroix's work on consignment, but had « a véritablement établi, imprimé et vendu une édition des Misérables ». To reduce Pagnerre to a mere territorial intermediary is in fact to misunderstand the complexity of the publishing history of this major work, for which the stakes, in the eyes of the exiled poet, were by no means merely financial.
With Napoléon le Petit and Les Châtiments, Hugo had shown the imperial regime that banishing the man did nothing to diminish the power of his words. On the contrary, his island exile could only echo that of an illustrious predecessor. The State's sole weapon was therefore censorship. From then on, this sword of Damocles dictated the publishing strategies of Hugo and his publishers. In 1856, the publication of Les Contemplations thus served as a dress rehearsal for Les Misérables: a consortium of publishers, simultaneous publication in France and Belgium, a single set of corrected proofs... Hugo even considered dividing the publication in order to outwit the censor: « La 1ère livraison paraît ; c'est le premier livre, Aurore, une géorgique, une bucolique, une églogue. On se jette dessus avec d'autant plus d'avidité qu'on craint que l'ouvrage ne soit interdit et que c'est presque du fruit défendu. Que fera le gouvernement ? Arrêtera-t-il cela ? quoi ! ce livre, Aurore : cette poésie fleur de mauve et rose tendre ? - il serait inouï, fabuleux, grotesque, ineffable de ridicule ; et en même temps que les frais de la tentative du côté des éditeurs seraient six fois moindres, l'odieux de l'instruction serait pour l'empire dix fois plus grand. »
These precautions, perhaps unnecessary for so restrained a collection of poems as Les Contemplations, were to provide the model for the publication of Les Misérables, an immense cry of alarm against inequality that could only provoke the anger of the imperial establishment.
Hugo's great work therefore had to sweep across the world in a single vast wave. If censorship prevented the work from appearing in Paris, it would come from everywhere else; and if the borders were closed to it, it would already be inside the capital. Multiple printing locations, synchronisation and the division of the work were the keys to the success of this skilful game of cat and mouse. To this threat was added the more prosaic danger of piracy, which likewise had to be forestalled. One month after the appearance of Fantine, the first two volumes of the novel, nearly ten pirated editions were already circulating in Europe.
Albert Lacroix would have preferred to undertake the entire enterprise alone and distribute his copies in France, as he did throughout the rest of the world. Hugo, despite the insistence of Hetzel — who had long courted him in the hope of obtaining this grail — had explicitly chosen this young, unknown and inexperienced Belgian publisher over his usual partners. Lacroix and Verboeckhoven were the sole publishers and made this clear in every volume, Belgian or French. Thus, opposite the title-pages of the Paris edition appears the statement « éditeur : Lacroix et Verboeckhoven & Cie ». And La Revue Anecdotique commented: « L'édition française originale de Paris n'a été faite que pour éviter les formalités de douane. »
The reality, however, is more complex; and if Lacroix was unable to impose his own address at the foot of the title-pages of the Paris edition, it was because Pagnerre was not merely an intermediary for the Belgian publisher. On the contrary, Pagnerre was in fact the original holder of the publication rights to Les Misérables.
In 1832 Hugo had signed an initial agreement with Gosselin, the publisher of Notre-Dame de Paris, promising his next « roman en deux volumes in-8 ». In 1848, a new contract specified the title of this novel: Les Misères, « dont le rythme [d'écriture] est devenu celui d'une période d'achèvement » (Leuilliot, p.18). But the Revolution of 1848 and then the poet's exile brought the « livre des Misères » to a halt, even though Charles Hugo had announced its imminent publication in L'événement of 31 July 1848. Thus, when twelve years later Hugo resumed work on the book with the words: « 14 février (1848) (ici le pair de France s'est interrompu, et le proscrit a continué :) 30 décembre 1860 Guernesey. », he remained bound to his former publisher, whose successor was none other than Laurent Pagnerre.
The heir to the Gosselin-Renduel firm was moreover no stranger to Victor Hugo: he had been one of the three partners, together with Hetzel and Lévy, who published Les Contemplations, and he remained the publisher of Hugo's son François-Victor.
Victor Hugo therefore sold his novel to Lacroix on condition that Lacroix negotiate with Pagnerre for the acquisition of the rights held by Gosselin and Renduel's successor. « J'ai vendu aujourd'hui Les Misérables à MM. A. Lacroix et Verboeckhoven et Cie, de Bruxelles, pour 12 années moyennant 240.000 fr. argent et 60.000 fr. éventuels. Ils acceptent le traité Gosselin-Renduel. Le contrat a été signé ce soir. ». But rather than sell his rights, Pagnerre preferred to exchange his 1832-1848 agreement with Lacroix for the exclusive right of distribution in France. The symbolic importance of Pagnerre's edition therefore in no way yields to that of Lacroix, and the Paris publisher was, through his own history, linked to the very origins of the novel.
As for the proofs, they were corrected on the Belgian printing at Lacroix's insistence, despite Hugo's own request: « songez quel avantage il y aurait pour vous à m'envoyer les épreuves de l'édition de Paris » (letter to Lacroix, 12 January 1862). Even though Lacroix appeared to ignore this suggestion, the advance sheets still had to be sent to Meurice so that the work could be perfected: « Il importe que l'édition parisienne soit page à page et ligne à ligne identique à l'édition belge. La rapidité et la sûreté des corrections sont à ce prix, et de cette façon Meurice pourra donner les bons à tirer. Autrement, je serais obligé de demander la dernière épreuve de chaque feuille. »
Finally, an archive in the Victor Hugo collection reveals that on the proof of the title-page the author had explicitly asked Lacroix to place the Brussels and Paris editions side by side on a common title-page: « Je crois qu'il faudrait mettre sur deux colonnes en regard Paris Pagnerre | Bruxelles A. Lacroix en répétant cela sur la double édition de Paris ».
Although Lacroix did not — deliberately? — adopt the proposal, despite taking account of Hugo's other corrections to the page, the meaning of the note is perfectly clear: for Hugo, there were not two editions, but a single edition whose printing was to be divided between two strategic locations for reasons at once political — the risk of censorship of this monumental incendiary work — social — the international circulation of a work with universal ambitions — and economic — the danger of piracy affecting the greatest novelist of the nineteenth century.
Georges Blaizot concluded in 1936 that the two editions were twin sisters. In doing so, he refuted the old rumour that in the Paris edition « un certain nombre de phrases ayant paru dangereuses pour la France, ont été modifiées » (Vicaire). This belief can, however, be traced to an unfortunate error on Victor Hugo's own part: on 24 December 1865 he wrote to Verboeckhoven: « Il va sans dire encore que si un mot ou une ligne semblait dangereuse pour Paris, il faudrait l'éliminer, comme on a fait pour Les Misérables, édition Claye ». Georges Blaizot pointed out that Hugo's memory had failed him and that, thanks to the careful proofreading of Meurice and Vacquerie, who « tenaient avant tout à ce que l'édition de Paris ne fût pas inférieure à l'autre », no unilateral cuts were in fact made. « Victor Hugo aura ignoré ou oublié ce détail. » (Dr Michaux quoted by G. Blaizot).
There are nevertheless genuine differences between the two editions — differences overlooked by these bibliographers — but they do not work to the detriment of the Paris version; quite the reverse. It was to his closest friend and factotum Paul Meurice, who throughout Hugo's eighteen years of exile was responsible for the publication, proofreading and correction of his works in France, and therefore for Pagnerre's edition of Les Misérables, that the author communicated his final corrections, not merely matters of form but of substance. These corrections were also sent to Lacroix, but too late, and the Belgian publisher informed Hugo that they would not appear until his second edition.
Pagnerre's edition was thus enriched by two modest yet significant reflections absent from the Brussels edition, in the important Waterloo chapter: « Le fond de ce prodigieux capitaine, c'était l'homme qui, dans le rapport au Directoire sur Aboukir, disait : Tel de nos boulets a tué six hommes. » ; « Tel point du champ de bataille dévore plus de combattants que tel autre, comme ces sols plus ou moins spongieux qui boivent plus ou moins vite l'eau qu'on y jette. On est obligés de reverser là plus de soldats qu'on ne voudrait. Dépenses qui sont l'imprévu. ».
More than twin sisters, then, the two impressions form one and the same publishing enterprise, embodying the ubiquity of their immense author. Alone on his rock yet everywhere present, Hugo invaded the public, poetic and political spheres with a universal novelistic tragedy that crossed continents, with no fewer than nine translations already under way by April 1862. A resounding affront to the Empire of Napoleon III, Victor Hugo's work immediately and irrevocably assumed the status of a founding secular myth, giving literary form to the Republican motto of 1848 and later 1879: Liberté - Egalité - Fraternité.

Rare and fine copy of the first edition, without edition statement, handsomely bound in uniform contemporary bindings.