Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe

Name: Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe
SKU: 28861
Price: 6000 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: François-René de Chateaubriand

Paris, Eugène et Victor Penaud, 1849-1850.

12 vols. (140 x 220 mm). In wrappers.

First edition. Complete with the publisher's foreword, the list of subscribers and Chateaubriand's letter to Delloye — and with the pagination error in volume II (p. 164 for p. 364). These leaves disappeared once the remainder of the edition was transferred to the bookseller Dion-Lambert.

Undoubtedly Chateaubriand’s most modern and best-loved work, the Mémoires blend recollections of his Breton youth, personal psychological inquiry and historical testimony that is often partisan but always compelling. “The work and personality of Chateaubriand (1768–1848) dominate the entire literary nineteenth century. He was born, said Barbey d’Aurevilly, like Napoleon, with a star upon his head, and when the emperor’s star faded and set, his own remained bright. Chateaubriand had admiration, influence, the eyes of the world fixed upon him, and a moment’s share in the government of his country. And, prodigiously, he remained a poet. A new way of feeling and thinking, of expressing oneself and understanding, dates from Chateaubriand. He opened the era of Romanticism” (Talvart).

A rare set in wrappers.

A few spines browned.

“A very important work, much sought after, and highly literary,” Carteret, Le Trésor du bibliophile, I, p. 163; Vicaire, II, 290; En français dans le texte, 268. “One of the most important texts of nineteenth-century literature,” Clouzot, 66; Talvart, III, p. 16; Rahir, Bibliothèque de l’amateur, 366.

#28861

Back