Oeuvres complètes

First collected edition of the works of François-René de Chateaubriand, issued in parts between 1826 and 1831 and here gathered in 32 volumes. Partly a first edition, the series includes the first appearances of Les Natchez, Le Dernier Abencérage, Voyage en Amérique and Moïse. Each volume is illustrated with a wood-engraved frontispiece by Charles Thompson, the English engraver established in Paris from 1816, showing a young woman seated beside a stone inscribed Chateaubriand, Œuvres complètes.

Strictly contemporary half brown calf. Spines with raised bands, decorated with two blind tools and rolls at head, foot and across the bands, brown calf lettering- and numbering-pieces. A few localised defects: loss at foot of volume IV; volume V bis with losses to the joints at head and surface wear at foot; volume V ter with upper joint split at head, loss at head and worn lower headcap; surface wear at the foot of volumes IX, X, XI, XVIII, XIX, XXIII, XXIV, XXVII and XXVIII, with a small loss to volume XI; head of volume XXVIII rubbed; supplement to volume XXII rubbed. Apart from occasional light spotting, an unusually fresh set on fine laid paper, with the customary foxing to the endleaves.

Engraved armorial bookplate of the d’Aurier de Piessac family, very probably that of Pierre-Camille, Baron d’Aurier de Piessac (1786-1866), squadron commander in the Lancers of the Royal Guard, Knight of Saint-Louis and Officer of the Légion d’honneur; the shield, the two greyhound supporters and the two suspended decorations correspond closely with his arms and distinctions.

The set comprises 32 volumes: Essai sur les révolutions (2 vols., 1826); Mélanges historiques (1 vol., 1827); Études historiques (4 vols., 1831); Voyages en Amérique (2 vols., 1827); Itinéraire (3 vols., 1826); Génie du christianisme (5 vols., 1826-1827); Atala, René et Le Dernier Abencérage (1 vol., 1826); Les Martyrs (3 vols., 1826); Les Natchez (2 vols., 1826); Mélanges littéraires (1 vol., 1826-1828); Mélanges et poésies (1 vol., 1828); Discours et opinions (1 vol., 1826); Mélanges politiques (2 vols., 1826-1828); Polémique (1 vol., 1827); De la liberté de la presse (1 vol., 1828); Table (1 vol., 1831), unopened; and finally Moïse (1831), an appendix to volume XXII, without separate volume numbering.

As the collected edition appeared, Chateaubriand himself revisited his texts, rearranged them and added new prefaces; in them he returned to their genesis, the circumstances of their composition, the people he had known and the events through which he had lived. His published work is thus reread in the light of his own existence, and these prefaces, which he presents as closely connected with his future Mémoires, already begin to turn his earlier books into witnesses to his own history.

The publication nevertheless stretched across five unsettled years. Ladvocat, long involved in issuing Chateaubriand’s works, encountered serious financial difficulties during the course of the undertaking; Dufey appears alongside him in the later parts, notably for Moïse in 1831. As the edition advanced, the oeuvre therefore continued to grow even as its author was already reshaping the memory of it.

Before the Mémoires d’outre-tombe gave this autobiographical enterprise its definitive form, these thirty-two volumes had already laid its first foundations; Chateaubriand rereads his own books here as fragments of a life he was beginning to set in order.