Spiridion

First edition. Printed on fine laid paper.
Contemporary full black shagreen binding. Spine with raised bands decorated with blind-tooled compartments. Two blind-ruled frames on covers. Edges gilt. Double gilt inner fillet. Some rubbing. Generally fresh throughout with occasional light foxing, notably some leaves with scattered spots. Handsome copy.
At the time when George Sand wrote Spiridion, one of her most important novels alongside Consuelo and Lelia, the author was considered a novelist of ideas whose every book seemed to consist of illustrating a thesis or a cause. Drawing upon the ruins of the Gothic novel for setting and plot with a supernatural atmosphere, Spiridion is an initiatory novel that presents itself as a series of embedded narratives of the spiritual and philosophical journeys of four generations of monks over the course of a century. This dark and austere work did not find its audience but was praised by Renan, Taine, Gustave Doré and Dostoevsky.