Le Docteur Pascal.
First edition of the last novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, considered by Emile Zola as “the summary and conclusion of all [his] work”.
A very fine copy printed on Dutch paper, with covers and spine preserved.
12mo, with (1) folding plate outside the text presenting the family tree of the Rougon-Macquart, (3) leaves, 390 pp., (1) leaf.
Long-grain red morocco, Jansenist style, raised bands on spine, gilt title on spine, double gilt fillet on the edges, inner border of red morocco decorated with seven gilt fillets, gilt edges, untrimmed copy, original covers and spine preserved. Binding signed by René Aussourd.
182 x 120 mm.
Zola, Émile. Doctor Pascal.
Paris, Charpentier et Fasquelle, 1893.
Rare first edition of Doctor Pascal by Emile Zola, the last novel in the Rougon-Macquart series.
Precious copy printed on Holland paper, after 5 on vellum and 40 on Japan.
Our copy is complete with the folding genealogical tree and the final prospectus relating to the portrait of Zola.
Carteret, II, 488; Vicaire, VII, 1216; Clouzot, 279.
This twentieth and final volume, which ends the Rougon-Macquart series, contains the final genealogical tree of the entire family.
The son of Pierre and Félicité Rougon, a doctor in Plassans, took in at his property, La Souléiade, Clotilde, the daughter of his brother Aristide, when she was barely seven years old. A biologist whose reputation is unknown in the town where he is the doctor for the poor, he conducts research on heredity. His family, with whom he has little in common, is his preferred subject of study. They present, in miniature, the history of humanity. So different from them that he is only called by his first name, he is able to look at them with objectivity.
Emile Zola was inspired by his personal relationship with Jeanne Roserot, a young twenty-year-old laundress, with whom he had two children. She was for Zola: “the renewal that came to Pascal late, at the decline of age ... and this youth, she would give to him after thirty years of his work, when he was already tired, and growing pale from having descended into the horror of human wounds.”
On the occasion of the publication of Doctor Pascal and to celebrate the completion of this work, the Minister of Public Instruction organized a banquet at the Chalet des Iles in the Bois de Boulogne, on June 20, 1893, attended by nearly two hundred personalities from the worlds of Letters and the Arts.
“Beyond, then, the condensed story of an entire era, Zola gives us an original, rich, and modern universe to read” (In French in the text).
“Zola’s work is one of the great monuments of world literature” (Upton Sinclair).
Precious copy, on Holland paper, adorned with a fine binding by René Aussourd.
First edition of one of Zola’s masterpieces.
An attractive copy printed on large paper.
