Atala

12mo of XXIV and 210 pages, long-grained red morocco, triple gilt fillet framing the covers, smooth spine richly decorated, gilt edges over marbling. Semet & Plumelle.

135 x 80 mm.

Chateaubriand. Atala, or the Loves of Two Savages in the Desert; by François-Auguste Chateaubriand.
Paris, Migneret, printer, and at the former Dupont bookstore, Year IX (1801).

“Very rare and highly sought-after first edition”of one of the greatest worldwide literary successes in the French language(Carteret).
Carteret, I, 159; Clouzot, 62; Monglond, V, 695; Sabin, 12237; Vicaire, II, 278; Escoffier, no.109.

“Very rare” (Clouzot).

“Very rare and sought after” (Carteret).

“It is from the publication of Atala that the noise I made in the world dates” (Memoirs from Beyond the Grave).

According to Escoffier, this is the first edition of the first romantic literary work, before “all the school manifestos.”

“Atala marks the beginning of French Romanticism. Its success was meteoric, hence the numerous editions published the same year—no less than five between April 1801 and April 1802. The first (this one) contained 210 pages. The second edition, with the same collation, can be recognized by its mention of ‘second edition’.”

In his New Studies on Chateaubriand, Victor Giraud notes about the first edition that it “must be extremely rare: for my part, I know only of the copy in the National Library, the one in the Victor Cousin Library, and one owned by a private individual.”

Beautiful copy elegantly bound in morocco by Semet and Plumelle.