La dernière mode

Posthumous first edition of Mallarmé's chronicles for the journal La Dernière mode. Preface by S. A. Rhodes.

3/4 morocco binding, spine with five raised bands, gilt title, decorative paper covers, marbled endpapcers and paste­downs. Bound as issued, top edge gilt, binding signed by Maylander. Spine and top of the front cover faded, and small trace of adhesive to one of the flyleaves.

A rare copy of the only first edition of Mallarmé published in the U.S. - bring­ing together chronicles from his great magazine of wit and opinion, The Latest Fashion, every page of which he wrote himself under various pseudonyms of both genders. Mallarmé wrote about the latest women's fashions and sang the praises of the great couturiers of the time, notably Emile Pingat and Charles-Frédéric Worth, "organizer of the sub­lime and daily celebration of Paris".

 

For four months in 1874, Mallarmé tried his hand at fashion writing initially out of financial necessity: "Myself, I have, after a few articles hawked about here and there, tried to write completely on my own, including advice on outfits, jewelry, furniture, even theater reviews and dinner menus, a journal entitled La Dernière mode, the eight or ten num­bers of which still serve, when I blow the dust off them, to make me dream at length" (Selected letters of Stéphane Mallarmé, tr. Rosemary Lloyd). At the same time as he was developing his poetic art, he theorized in the pag­es of this short-lived magazine on women's finery, and gave advice on vacation destinations, furnishings and entertainment. Mallarmé was at once the director, editor and publicist of his own magazine which also con­tained a healthy dose of literature and poetry: "which each issue offered a sample: the prose or verse of Coppée, Valade, Hervilly, des Essarts, Mendès, Cladel" (Émilie Noulet, Mallarmé. Vingt poèmes) in addition to his own magnifi­cent prose: "All the rest is poetry. All the rest is perfect. All the rest is of a natural originality that nothing else approach­es. Not a paragraph, not a sentence that does not seem to be an excerpt from some rare prose poem" (ibid.).
The Institute of French Studies in New York was the first to publish these Mal­larmé chronicles in book form: "It is as­tonishing, and to say the least dismay­ing, to realize that it took a century in France - exactly one hundred and four years - to publish an edition of this work by Mallarmé (Jean Pierre Lecercle, Mallarmé et la mode, 1989).
A rare copy of Mallarmean texts long snubbed in France and resurrected at the initiative of American scholarship.