Alexis de TOCQUEVILLE.

Lot 94
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Alexis de TOCQUEVILLE.
De la Démocratie en Amérique. Orné d'une carte d'Amérique. Paris, Charles Gosselin, 1835-1840. 4 volumes in-8: blue half calf, spines decorated, speckled edges (period bindings for the first two volumes, pastiche for the last two). First edition. It is adorned with a large engraved and coloured map of America. A first issue copy, without any mention of editions on the titles. "His study trip to the United States (1831), on a historically virgin ground, provided him with a real laboratory experiment in order to probe the behaviour of the future homo democraticus. He returned with predictions about the dark side of liberalism. The prognosis was verified with regard to the two drifts of democracy, individualism and despotism. Moreover, a beautiful romantic writing is at the service of a reflection which refuses to close the analysis in a system. The posthumous star of the oracle will not have weakened. Raymond Aron includes it in his pantheon of "sociological thought", François Furet invokes it, and intellectuals who have broken with the Marxist vulgate appropriate it" (Jacques T. (Jacques T. Quentin, Fleurons de la Bodmeriana, Chronique d'une histoire du livre, 2005, nº 56: for the copy, with the correct dates, of Prince Dietrichstein). The work was a bestseller, as evidenced by its many reprints. "Not since Montesquieu has there been such a success" remarked Pierre-Paul Royer- Collard - who was linked with Alexis de Tocqueville and the duke of Noailles. Autograph letter signed on the false-title of volume III: to the duke of Noailles, homage of the author AT Doctrinaire attached to the legitimist party, the duke of Noailles (1802-1885) was a peer of France. He had sworn to the July monarchy, which his mentor, Chateaubriand, whose confidant and friend he was, had refused, as he points out in his Mémoires d'outre-tombe: "M. I did not hear him make those speeches in which he pleaded, with the authority of reason and the power of the word, the cause of France and that of royal misfortunes. His part began when mine ended: he swore to misfortune in a more useful manner than I." With the support of Mme. Récamier, he was elected to the French Academy in Chateaubriand's chair. Tocqueville, Chateaubriand's nephew, had been elected there seven years earlier. He was then a deputy for La Manche; a liberal, he sat on the left. His uncle shot him a perfidious line in the Mémoires d'outre-tombe: "Alexis de Tocqueville has travelled the civilized America whose forests I have visited." The meeting of the two writers, historians and committed men but of differing opinions, is particularly piquant. First issue copies of the first edition are not common; they are rare endowed with a mailing. The first two volumes have been washed and rebound in their binding. The last two volumes have been bound in a similar but not identical manner, with the same endpapers and boards. (Bibliothèque nationale, En français dans le texte, 1990, n° 253.)
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