La Dame aux Camélias
A very fine copy from the Duchess of Berry.
“Perhaps the rarest of all the romantics. Even a demanding collector might settle for an imperfect copy; in modern bindings, trimmed and without covers. In a good quality period binding, it is almost impossible to find” (Marcel Clouzot).
2 volumes in 1 book, 12mo, half brown morocco, spine with raised bands and gilt decoration, title and volume labels in green morocco, yellow edges. Elegant period binding.
148 x 95 mm.
Dumas, Alexandre, fils (1824-1895). The Lady of the Camellias.
First volume – second.
Brussels, Meline, Cans and Co., 1848.
Original in-12 edition published three years before the first French in-12 edition, printed in Brussels in 1848, the same year as the Parisian in-8 original.
“Perhaps the rarest of all the romantics. Even the most demanding collector may settle for an imperfect copy, in modern bindings, cut down
and without covers. In good quality period binding, it is almost unobtainable” (Marcel Clouzot).
For his novel, Alexandre Dumas fils was inspired by his passionate love affair with the courtesan Marie Duplessis, between September 1844 and August 1845. “The Lady of the Camellias” was written in 1848, a few months after the young woman’s death. Sent to boarding school at a very young age, Dumas struggled with his status as a “bastard” child, as he himself described it. When he met Marie Duplessis, she gave him the stability he needed. After her death, he moved to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to the Auberge du Cheval Blanc, and finished the work in three weeks.
Exceptional and superb copy from the library of the Duchess of Berry (1798-1870), reader and bibliophile.
From the Austrian residence where the duchess spent her final years.
After assembling a first, luxurious library at the Château de Rosny, partly dispersed in 1837, Marie-Caroline of Bourbon-Sicily, widow of the Duke of Berry, lived in exile after the 1830 revolution and the failed 1832 uprising to restore her son, the Count of Chambord, to the throne of France. Yet always and everywhere, books accompanied her. It was in Austria, at Brünsee, purchased in 1838, that the duchess rebuilt a library, made up of manuscripts and precious old books, classical literature, but also contemporary works.
The volume bears a printed label with the name Brünsee, without collation number, with the mention “A l’Index” on a small tab affixed to it. It was bound at the duchess’s request by a craftsman from the city of Graz.
