Carmen

Name: Carmen
SKU: 29825
Author: Prosper Mérimée

Paris, Michel Lévy, 1846.

1 vol. (125 x 200 mm) of [2] and 363 p. Long-grained burgundy morocco, spine ribbed and decorated with blind fillets, gilt title, top edge gilt, date gilt at foot, double fillet on edges, inner lace, matching edged slipcase (binding signed by R. & A. Maylander).

First edition. A very fine copy with large margins, carefully bound by the Maylander brothers. It bears the repeated stamp of the “Salon littéraire de Mme Poupard.”

In addition to Carmen, the volume contains Arsène Guillot and L’Abbé Aubain. After his election to the Académie française, Prosper Mérimée wrote this novella, inspired by a story told fifteen years earlier by the future Empress Eugénie de Montijo: “It concerned a Jaque from Malaga who had killed his mistress, a woman who devoted herself exclusively to the public. As I had been studying the Gypsies with great care for some time, I made my heroine a Gypsy” (Mérimée, Correspondance générale, IV, 294–295). The work did not immediately meet with the same success as Colomba, and it was only with the impact of Georges Bizet’s opera, premiered in 1875, that Carmen, a femme fatale carried away by her passion and ferocity, became a true myth (En français dans le texte, no. 265).

“One of the rarest and most sought-after Romantic titles” (Clouzot), this “very rare Carmen [is] one of Prosper Mérimée’s most famous works” (Carteret).

#29825

Back