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€ 5.000 - 6.000
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€ 5.000
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At auction on Thursday 21 November 2024 at 10:30
Information
Paris, Calmann Lévy, 1896. In 4° grande. First edition, bringing together the stories published since 1892 in Le Banquet , La Revue blanche, Le Gaulois and L'Année des poetes . Illustrated with an original watercolour and numerous drawings by Madeleine Lemaire ( copy no. 6 of 20 printed on papier Imperiales du Japon ) , some full-page, with 13 pages of musical scores by Reynaldo Hahn for Les Portraits de Peintures . Preface by Anatole France.
Refined and elegant binding in hazelnut morocco signed HUSER with friezes of stylised leaves in white and green leather on the covers inserted in a frame of circles and another geometric frame, brown leather bear with five ribs with the same friezes of white and green leaves with the name of the author and the work engraved in gold, gilded trim, front and back pastedowns in white leather. The original paperback has been preserved. Hardback slipcase with a motif of shades of yellow on a black background. Two ex libris by Raoul Simonson and Josè Peraya.
Specialist Notes
(from the Preface by Anatole France)
PROUST'S FIRST WORK.
Les Plaisirs et les Jours is a collection of prose poems and short stories by Marcel Proust, published in 1896 by Calmann-Lévy, with an introduction by Anatole France. The title of the work recalls that of Hesiod, Works and Days . Inspired by the elegant decadentism of Robert de Montesquiou, it was the first work in volume, published in a luxury edition, by the future author of À la recherche du temps perdu . Each part of the book can be read as a stand-alone, but the continuous reading of all its parts makes the world of the Paris salons that Proust habitually frequented coherent and unitary, almost as if it were an anticipation of his monumental novel.
The work of an author who was still unknown at the time, illustrated by a society artist and preceded by great literary fame, it was considered the whim of a know-it-all and therefore sold poorly: its price of 13.50 F for a copy contrasted absurdly with that of other similar books of the time, which rarely exceeded 3 F. Twenty years later, only 329 copies had been sold out of a print run of 1,500. Probably largely thanks to Proust himself, who often offered them to his relatives.