Fortunio, roman incroyable
Total print run of 290 copies.
One of 17 copies on white Lana paper (no. 31), enriched with a suite with remarques and an original sketch.
The copy is further enriched with a presentation inscription signed at the limitation statement, an original ink drawing, and an autograph letter signed by the illustrator.
First published in 1837, Fortunio is one of Théophile Gautier’s most singular texts. It first appeared under the title L’Eldorado, serialized in the newspaper Le Figaro from 28 May to 14 July 1837, then in book form under its definitive title in 1838. Gautier, who claimed to have missed his true calling as a painter and to have spent his life producing transpositions of art in compensation, wrote to Sainte-Beuve in 1863 that it was “the last work in which I freely expressed my true thought; after that, the invasion of cant and the need to submit to the conventions of the newspapers threw me into purely physical description; I no longer stated any doctrine and kept my idea secret” (in Correspondance générale, t. VIII, pp. 202–203).
Gautier, Correspondance générale, edited by Claudine Lacoste-Veysseyre, with the collaboration of Jean-Claude Fizaine and Andrew Gann, under the direction of Pierre Laubriet, Geneva-Paris, Droz; Monod, 5188.