Gérard de Nerval.

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Lot n° 74
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Gérard de Nerval.
Scenes of Oriental Life. Les Femmes du Caire. Paris, Ferdinand Sartorius, 1848. 2 volumes in one in-8: half red morocco with corners, spine smoothly decorated throughout, cover preserved (Canape and Corriez). First edition: a very rare first issue copy with the date of 1848. Published in February 1848, during the Revolutionary Days, the work went unnoticed. The catalogue of the Nerval exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale points out that in the first issue copies, volume II bears the address of Sartorius and the date of 1848: "Not recorded in the Bibliographie de la France, [not] mentioned in the Bibliographie d'Aristide Marie, it is extremely rare. The publisher Souverain bought back the unsold copies and republished the edition, in 1850, with relay titles." Moreover, the title of the second volume bears, as a subtitle, "Les Femmes du Caire," like the first, instead of: "Les Femmes du Liban." First version of Gérard de Nerval's Voyage en Orient, the definitive edition of which was to appear three years later (Charpentier, 1851). Gérard de Nerval left for a year. He embarked from Marseilles on 1 January 1843: he stopped at Malta and Syra, disembarking at Alexandria on 16 January. He stayed in Cairo until the beginning of May, before visiting Syria. In July, he left Beirut and reached (via Cyprus, Rhodes and Smyrna) Constantinople, where he spent three months. On October 28 he re-embarked, stopped over in Malta, stayed for ten days in Naples and arrived in Marseille on December 5. "The impressions of the journey, real or dreamed, mixed with bookish reminiscences, will become the material, with several years of hindsight, of the Voyage en Orient" (Bibliothèque nationale, Gérard de Nerval, 1955, p. 40). A fine copy. Only one cover has been preserved. (Carteret, II, p. 218: "This work, rare and complete, is very important in the work of Gérard de Nerval."- Clouzot, p. 223: "Extremely rare in fine condition."- Maison de Balzac, Gérard de Nerval, Paris, 1981, no. 128: "Original edition of which only a few copies are known to have been published in 1848. The second volume is said to have been published only in 1850 by H. Souverain. This one brings the proof that the two parts were indeed printed by Sartorius in 1848, but the revolutionary events probably postponed the publication of the second volume which, in our opinion, was indeed printed that same year, but was not bound, except for a few copies undoubtedly reserved for the author.)
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