Œuvres
“It was during her captivity that Madame Roland hastily wrote the various parts that make up her admirable memoirs, whose pages she secretly sent to the noble and loyal Bosc, who saved them by hiding them in the hollow of a rock in the Montmorency forest” (P. Larousse).
The Memoirs of Madame Roland: being a woman in the turmoil of History.
First collective edition of Madame Roland’s Memoirs printed in 1799.
3 volumes in-8 of: I/ (2) leaves, 1 portrait, XC and 348 pp. (4) leaves; II/ (2) leaves and 444 pp; III/ (2) leaves, 435 pp. and (2) leaves.
Marbled and glazed Havana calf, gilt roll around covers, smooth spine decorated, title label and volume number in red morocco, gilt fillet on edges, yellow edges. Contemporary binding.
198 x 124 mm.
Roland, Madame. Works of J. M. Ph. Roland, wife of the former Minister of the Interior, containing the memoirs and historical notes she wrote in prison in 1793… and accompanied by notes, and notices by the same, about her detention.
Paris, Bidault, Year VIII (1799).
First collective edition of the famousMemoirs of Madame Roland, guillotined on 10 Brumaire 1793.
“The remarkable pieces that make up these Memoirs, written by Madame Roland during the captivity that preceded her death, were secretly entrusted by her to the naturalist Bosc, who hid them in the hollow of a rock, in the forest of Montmorency, while awaiting the calming of the storm that had carried away her friends of the Girondin party” (P. Larousse).
Among the essential testimonies on the French Revolution, Madame Roland’s Memoirs (1754–1793) were among the first delivered to the public.
Madame Roland’s Memoirs stand at the crossroads of public and private, history and intimacy. She wrote them during her incarceration in the Abbaye prison in 1793. They are divided into two very distinct parts: on the one hand, the strictly historical Memoirs, on the other hand, the “Private Memoirs” which chronicle the private life of the Parisian middle class between 1760 and 1780, allowing us to enter the intimacy of the young Marie-Jeanne, known as Manon Phlipon.
Madame Roland never ceased to be interested in philosophical ideas and the advent of liberty.
Four times a week, the Rolands would gather at their home the leading political figures who would soon make up the Girondin party—Brissot, Pétion, Buzot, Condorcet, Barbaroux, and others. All these distinguished men were captivated by Madame Roland’s reason, the clarity of her judgment, the strength of her convictions, the breadth of her knowledge, and, perhaps, by the infinite charm of her conversation, her wit, her grace, and her beauty. In any case, the curious fact remained: a great political party whose real leader was a woman.
It was she who wrote the instructions, circulars, and other documents, notably the famous Letter to the King of June 10, 1792. What seems certain is that she helped propel the party for which she was the muse into that relentless war against the Mountain and the Paris Commune, which would prove fatal to the Girondins as well as to the Revolution. Her hatred for Danton and Robespierre made her refuse any compromise, and there is every indication that it was she who persuaded Louvet, the hotheaded and frivolous author of Faublas, to draw up his famous act of accusation against Robespierre.
She was arrested. It was during her captivity that she hastily wrote the various pieces that make up her admirable memoirs.
Arriving before the scaffold, she saluted the gigantic statue of Liberty which stood on the pedestal made vacant by the statue of Louis XV and pronounced the now historic words: “O Liberty! What crimes are committed in your name!”
Very beautiful copy, without foxing, preserved in its elegant period bindings.
