Le Grand Meaulnes

Name: Le Grand Meaulnes
SKU: 29328
Price: 10800 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Alain-Fournier

Paris, Émile-Paul frères, (September) 1913.

1 vol. (115 x 185 mm) of 366 p. and 1 f. Ivory morocco with doublures, spine ribbed, gilt title, date gilt at foot, double gilt fillet on edges, edges gilt on the rough, moiré endleaves, original wrappers and spine preserved, cigar-case slipcase (binding signed Huser).

First edition. Copy from the first issue, with the September dates for the printing of the text “15822-9-13” on p. 366, October for the wrapper “15824-10-13,” and with the 3F.50 price noted on the spine. It has the error on p. 133: [chapter I] instead of [chapter II]; the error was corrected during this first printing (in the final third of the print run). Copy no. 555, with numbering machine.

A further numbered issue was printed on green paper (10 or 6 copies); a further 30 copies (10 on Japanese paper and 20 on Hollande) were printed in January 1914 — a fact not fully documented.

A precious copy, enriched with an important letter from Alain-Fournier to his friend Georges Le Cardonnel, written a few months before the publication of Le Grand Meaulnes, in the spring of 1913: “L’Opinion […] found, I believe quite sincerely, my book good […] but it did not seem sufficiently Jeune France, sufficiently a ‘novel of L’Opinion,’ sufficiently an ‘Agathon inquiry.’ […] I regret only one thing, that this adventure delayed the publication of a book finished long ago. From now on I shall resist all temptations. It will appear in July either in the NRF or in La Grande Revue (my choice), and in October, in book form, either at the NRF or at Émile-Paul’s (also my choice).”

The green-paper copy of René Gaffé-Hayoit-Simonson contained the following letter, dated June, to the same recipient, in which Alain-Fournier announces the serialization of Le Grand Meaulnes in the Nouvelle Revue Française. This copy also contained a typescript copy of a letter from Émile-Paul to Simonson, detailing the print run of the edition: “The book first appeared in September 1913, at the end of the summer holidays. There was a printing on ordinary paper, numbered to 1,000 copies, and 10 copies on green paper reserved for the author. The novel met with great press and critical success, and requests for copies on fine paper reached us from every quarter. At the start of 1914 we had 10 copies printed on Japanese paper and 20 on Hollande, which were delivered to us by the printer in February 1914. These copies have exactly the same presentation as those published earlier.”

This letter contradicts the one sent by Émile-Paul to Auguste Blaizot on February 6, 1934, in which the publisher states that six copies — not 10 — had been printed on green paper (in the Jacques Guérin copy, sale of November 28, 1990, no. 103). Moreover, it is established that a copy on Japanese paper (no. 2) bears an inscription dated January, which makes their delivery in February impossible.

Provenance: Bibliothèque Egide Bouchez (bookplate); Jean E. Leclercq (bookplate). This splendid copy was also exhibited in 1969 in the exhibition and catalogue Reflets de la Bibliophilie en Belgique (Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, no. 103).

Deprechins, Le Livre et l’Estampe, 1970, no. 63-4, pp. 177–8.

#29328

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