Reliques
One of the first 15 copies on China paper, justified in ink by the publisher (after 5 on Japanese paper and 10 on Holland paper). An extremely rare deluxe printing, not mentioned in the current edition.
An exceptional copy, enriched with unique items:
– the original watercolor signed by Antoine Bourdelle, a portrait-frontispiece of Tellier, the model for the bronze executed in 1895 for the city of Le Havre (founder Thiébaut);
– three autograph manuscripts by Jules Tellier: Fidélité (14 lines), Les deux flûtes (5 lines), and À Léandre (24 lines, partly in Tailhède's hand), dated “Constantine novembre 1889.”
Jules Tellier (1863–1889), who received the agrégation in letters in 1882, taught in Cherbourg, Langres, Constantine and Moissac. He published Les Brumes in 1883, collaborated with Barrès on the Chroniques, and later brought out Les Écrivains d’aujourd’hui, nos poètes. He died prematurely of typhoid in Toulouse at the age of twenty-six, on his way back from Algeria and Spain, leaving behind the reputation of a brilliant poet and critic, of which Reliques preserves the trace.
The publication of this volume prompted numerous tributes: Maurice Barrès (Le Figaro), Anatole France (Le Temps), Jules Lemaître, Paul Margueritte, Charles Maurras, Georges Montorgueil and Verlaine (Art et critique). In 1892 Anatole France wrote: “Les Reliques de Jules Tellier are such as to give us bitter regrets” (Vie littéraire, p. 180).
His bronze bust, preserved at the Musée du Havre, is the work of the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle and the founder Thiébaut, dating from 1895. Another drawing of the bust, on its pedestal, is preserved at the Musée Bourdelle in Toulouse.
Manuscripts by Jules Tellier are rare, and this China-paper printing is equally so.
The existence of the deluxe-paper copies is not mentioned in the current edition.