Des symptomes intellectuels de la folie - Exemplaire d'Emile Zola

Second edition (the dedication to Pierre Laffitte is dated 1879).

A study of madness from a positivist perspective, based on the work of Auguste Comte.

The dedicatee, Pierre Laffitte, was the editor of the review "Le Positivisme".

Spine cracked with small losses, occasional foxing, and a horizontal crease at the foot of the upper cover, small marginal tears on the cover, firts cover reattached.

With a fine signed presentation inscription from Emile François Eugène Sémérie to Émile Zola on the half-title: "A Mr. Émile Zola. Sémérie, d'Aix" (the final word underlined).

The close connections between positivism and naturalism, the literary doctrine developed in the 1860s–1880s, are well known: positivist philosophy (the observation of reality and the primacy of experience) influenced naturalist writers in their concern to depict reality with strict objectivity.

Zola made an essential contribution to the movement with his study "Roman expérimental" (1880).