Les Charités d’Alcippe
Presentation copy inscribed by the author to Sylvie Genevoix: “à Sylvie Genevoix, hommage de l'auteur, ces poèmes de toute une vie. Marguerite Yourcenar, 14 novembre 1984.”
The first edition of this text had been published in 1956. However, the entire print run was destroyed due to printing errors: these typographical mistakes led to a falling-out between Marguerite Yourcenar and her publisher, resulting in the book being withdrawn from sale altogether. It would take nearly thirty years, and this Gallimard edition, for the text to finally reach the public.
A fine copy with an excellent editorial provenance: Sylvie Genevoix, a journalist for Le Figaro and L’Express, served as literary director at Éditions Albin Michel, which she joined in 1992. She was also the daughter of the novelist and academician Maurice Genevoix, author of Raboliot. As recounted in La maison de mon Père, published in 2011, it was “in his haven at Les Vernelles, on a hillside overlooking the Loire, that the greater part of Maurice Genevoix’s writing and life unfolded, mirroring the river he contemplated from his study.” It was there that she spent her childhood.