William Shakespeare

First edition.
Contemporary red half morocco. Spine with raised bands, compartments decorated with gilt dentelle borders. Gilt titles. Some rubbing. A few scattered spots of foxing, otherwise a fresh copy on good wove paper.





 

What eventually became a book was originally intended merely as a preface to the works of Shakespeare translated by François-Victor Hugo; but carried away by the scope of his project, Hugo transformed it into a manifesto for Romanticism, developing and asserting his theory of the visionary and missionary genius in opposition to the doctrine of art for art's sake. "Il y a des hommes océans", Hugo writes. It is also a definition of the political artist and an artistic doctrine: Victor Hugo's great theoretical testament.