To M. Emile Henriot, in testimony of my admiration and my friendship. C. de Gaulle. 4.7.56.
The original edition of Mémoires de guerre by Charles de Gaulle,
valuable copy offered and inscribed by the author to Emile Henriot.
Paris, 1954-1956-1959.
In French in the text, 398.
Gaulle, Charles de. Mémoires de guerre. L’Appel (1940-1942)- L’Unité (1942-1944)- Le Salut (1944-1946).
Paris, Librairie Plon, 1954-1956-1959.
3 volumes in-8 of: I/ (4) ff., 680 pp., (2) ff., 1 folding map; II/ (4) ff., 712 pp., (2) ff., 1 folding map; III/ (5) ff., 653 pp., (1) f., 1 folding map. Bound in half red morocco with corners, gilt fillet highlighting the separation, ribbed back adorned with blind fillets, gilt title, gilt head, untrimmed, covers and spine preserved. Binding signed A. & R. Maylander.
225 X 140 mm.
original edition of the ‘mémoires de guerre’ by general de Gaulle, of which the first two volumes are part of the copies printed on alfa reserved for the former members of Free France and the members of the combatant and resistant associations of the war, this one numbered 1923.
The third volume printed on special bulking paper was reserved for Émile Henriot with his label.
« On October 22, 1954, ‘L’Appel’, the first volume of the ‘Mémoires de guerre’ by General de Gaulle was published. Once more, the man of June 18 created an event. Having left power in January 1946 to not endorse a parliamentary government, he unsuccessfully attempted to return through elections. Retrenched at Colombey, he engaged in a bitter sojourn in the desert.‘L’Appel’, far from any political contestation, brought him back to the forefront. National reverberation. Literary unanimity in admiration. One hundred thousand copies sold in a month and soon a worldwide circulation: four years later, the work was published in all non-communist European countries except Greece, as well as in U.R.S.S., the United States, Latin America, Beirut, Israel, and Hong Kong. The second volume, released in 1956, had equal success; the third, published while de Gaulle was back in power, was debated but, by 1961, the cumulative sales of the three volumes in France exceeded the million mark.
Great literary work, the ‘Mémoires de guerre’ filled a historical void. To the French of the 1950s, steeped in resistant literature, but not well versed in the epic of Free France, they revealed, supported by documents, the course of the greatest French collective adventure of the century and the relentless struggle waged by an extraordinary rebel to raise France from the abyss and impose it as a victorious power.
The rewriting of history by one of its actors does not diminish, for the most part, the truth. It added to the chronicle an implicit message: not only did the master of energy wish to remind the French what they owed him, but he intended to unite them around the best image of themselves and encourage them towards a future worthy of a great nation. In this way, the historical work was also political. It was doubly so, as the success of the ‘Mémoires de guerre’ would be a step towards the return to power of General de Gaulle.bb
(Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac, Preface of Mémoires de guerre by De Gaulle in La Pléiade Collection).
Charles de Gaulle elaborates in this book the epic of Free France during the Second World War and describes its unfolding in great detail.
He includes to support his narrative appendices with many documents such as numerous telegrams exchanged during the war between various political and military figures, or maps of the various military operations undertaken by France.
« The ‘Mémoires de guerre’ are a remarkable bookstore success. Sales quickly reach 100,000. When the third volume appears, 150,000 copies of the complete work will adorn private and public libraries. To date, 750,000 have been sold in total, and the work has been translated into twenty-two languages, including Chinese, Finnish, and Turkish.
The press, from the outset, was admiring. ‘In de Gaulle the writer, one finds the same spirit and discipline that animated the man of action, the same flame…’ (Marcel Arland, Nouvelle revue française). ‘The reading of these Memoirs ultimately convinces that a great man is almost always a great writer’ (Georges Duhamel, Nouvelles littéraires). ‘He is prestigious in his shortcuts… with traits like Tacitus, Retz, Saint-Simon’ (Emile Henriot, Le Monde)…
The ‘Mémoires de guerre’ immediately became a great classic of the genre and the contemporary writing most apt to cultivate in new generations the sense of homeland.bb (In French in the text, 398).
While the year 2010 marks 120 years since General de Gaulle’s birth, the 70th anniversary of the Call of June 18, 1940, and the 40th anniversary of the General’s death, it also marks the 10th anniversary of the entry of the General’s Mémoires into the Pléiade Library.
Valuable presentation copy with respectful autograph dedication on the half-titles of each of the three volumes signed by General de Gaulle to Emile Henriot:
“To M. Emile Henriot, whom I greatly admire with the testimony of my high consideration. C. de Gaulle. October 18, 19548(m 1) / « To M. Emile Henriot, in testimony of my admiration and friendship. C. de Gaulle. 4.7.568(m 2) / « In gratitude and admiration. C. de Gaulle. 7.11.598(m 3).
The copy is also enriched with two autograph letters from General de Gaulle (each of 1 sheet in-8) dated November 13, 1954, and June 29, 1956, in which he thanks Emile Henriot, his “dear Master,” for his articles in Le Monde regarding the first two volumes of His Mémoires.
The copy also contains in volume 2 the draft of the thank you letter that Emile Henriot sends to General de Gaulle on June 9, 1956, after receiving a copy of this same volume.
Emile Henriot (1889-1961) was a French poet, novelist, essayist, and literary critic. Journalist at Temps between the two wars, he became the literary critic for Monde, heir to Temps at Liberation. He was elected to the French Academy in 1945.
Regarding the call of June 18, Emile Henriot wrote: « One man spoke alone, and he spoke in the name of France… Just as well, here is the whole man, as he wanted himself, hardened in himself, called to answer for everything, aware of what one can do in solitude if endowed with a tenacious soul… While in humiliated France, a vote changed the form of institutions, the refusal of this humiliation, the refusal to consent to defeat, the certainty that a lost battle is not a lost war and that hope remained open, brought into History a forty-nine-year-old man whom fate threw out of all series. »
Valuable copy, large margins as untrimmed, offered and inscribed by De Gaulle to Émile Henriot.
