Théophile GAUTIER.

Lot 28
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Estimation :
4000 - 6000 EUR
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Result : 8 200EUR
Théophile GAUTIER.
Mademoiselle de Maupin. Double amour. Paris, Eugène Renduel, 1835-1836. 2 volumes in-8: stapled, printed covers. Devauchelle's box in long-grained midnight blue morocco decorated in gold and cold. Rare first edition: first issue copy. Famous work whose long preface, dated May 1834, has the value of a literary manifesto of Romanticism. Some prefaces are more famous than the books they accompany. Two of them were essential milestones of Romanticism to the point of "devouring the book they open with a fanfare", according to S. Guégan: on the one hand, the preface to Cromwell (1827) and, on the other, the one at the beginning of Mademoiselle de Maupin. If the first text defended romantic drama against classical tragedy, the second formulates the principles of "art for art's sake": "There is only real beauty in what can serve no purpose; everything useful is ugly. [...] The most useful place in a house is the latrine." The publication of Mademoiselle de Maupin in 1835 illustrated the definitive break between art and morality: erotic games and transvestite characters thwarted the rules of love, inverting the norms imposed by society. "A real event, for Baudelaire, Maupin, according to Du Camp, is one of those hot books, which are found under the pillow of young women, and of which it is appropriate to overwhelm "the wanton sensualism" after having enjoyed it" (S. Guégan, Théophile Gautier, 2011, p. 91). Rare copy preserved as issued, paperback, with all margins. "This capital work is perhaps the rarest of the Romantics in beautiful condition, with all margins, with its covers; only a few copies are known. It is usually quite trimmed and without cover" (Léopold Carteret). The covers are both dated 1836, as they should be: the second cover of the first volume announces the complete works of Hoffmann and that of the second volume four works by Théophile Gautier: Les Jeunes France, Albertus and, in press, La Comédie de la mort and Le Capitaine Fracasse. From the library of Louis de Sadeleer, with ex-libris. Spines cracked with paper missing from the headpieces. (Carteret, I, p. 322.- Clouzot, p. 70: "Extremely rare.")
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