Mark Twain
Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1884.
1 vol. (135 x 220 mm) of 111 pp. Green half-chagrin, gilt title throughout, covers and spine (muted) preserved (later binding).
First edition printed on laid paper, in a small number.
Signed letter: ‘à Monsieur Ollendorf, hommage de l’auteur, H. Gauthier-Villars’.
We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.
Henri Gauthier-Villars is the eldest son of Jean-Albert Gauthier-Villars, owner of a rapidly expanding scientific publishing house. His father, uncle, younger brother and brother-in-law were all polytechnicians.
While he was finishing law school, his passion for Anglo-Saxon literature led him to take an interest in Mark Twain, of whom only a few stories had appeared in La Revue des Deux Mondes since 1872. He decided to devote a monograph to him, which he initially presented in the form of a paper read to the literary society Conférence Olivaint, a highly influential Catholic student society. Appreciated, he decided to publish it at his own expense, although it was considerably enlarged, on the presses of the family business located at 55 quai des Grands-Augustins.
This is the first book devoted to Mark Twain: ‘the portrait he paints of the American novelist and the analysis of his humour make it possible to understand what set him apart from the Parnassians, the Symbolists and the Decadents, but also from naturalists like Zola’. (Madeleine Lazard, Colette, p. 41). Publishing opened the door to magazines, in which he was to play a major role. In 1888, Jean-Albert Gauthier-Villars went into partnership with his two sons: Henri took over the publishing house and his brother Albert the printing works. His first book, signed Willy, was L’Année fantaisiste (1891). He married Colette in 1893 in Châtillon-sur-Loing. She was twenty, he thirty-four; the couple settled in Paris, on the Quai des Grands-Augustins, above the family’s scientific publishing house.
A very fine copy from a fine provenance: that of his competitor, the publisher Ollendorff, who published the writings of his friend Alphonse Allais. It was with Ollendorff, from 1900 onwards, that he published the Claudine series, which Colette wrote for him and agreed to publish under the name of her husband, who exploited this best-seller to the hilt. ‘Thanks to Willy, Claudine became the most popular character of the turn of the century. This craze found repercussions in the most unexpected commercial activities: hats, cigarettes, perfumes… while Claudine ice creams and cakes appeared on the shelves of the La Boétie patisserie. Success after success, Claudine became a windfall for its authors. But Willy was always short of money – frequenting the green carpet was expensive – so he sold the rights to the four Claudines. He sold the rights to all four Claudines to their publisher, Ollendorff, and you can imagine Colette’s anger as she accused her husband of ripping her off. Colette did not forgive Willy for squandering her fortune. It was the end of the winning couple who, a few years earlier, had paraded on horseback in the Bois de Boulogne’. (Carmen Boustani, Willy : le bonheur de l’imposture, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011).
