Paris, G. Charpentier, 1884.
8vo of (4) ll. including 2 bl., 337 pp.
Jansenist blue morocco, ribbed spine, inner gilt fillet, havana morocco doublures, blue and gilt tabis endleaves, gilt over untrimmed edges, yellow wrappers bound in. Binding signed Marius Michel.
185 x 115 mm.
First edition of this classic of provençal literature.
Carteret, Le Trésor du bibliophile, 197.
A precious copy, one of only 175 printed on Holland paper.
“Alphonse Daudet’s (1840-1897) novel, published in 1884, is one of the most important works of his second manner, or “Parisian manner”. Inspired by a now triumphant realism (which was already evolving towards naturalism), the plot is of great simplicity: the author limits himself to following the adventures, which are nothing but very ordinary, of the life of a single character. It’s about a young Provençal who frequents a group of artists in Paris, and falls in love with a beautiful woman, a model known as Sapho…
Daudet, who knew from experience some of the capital’s notorious society, wanted to take up a theme already dealt with in ‘Manette Salomon’, and to defend in a more precise way an ideal of healthy, properly bourgeois life, against the attractions of bohemia. The book bears a significant dedication: ‘To my sons, when they turn twenty’. However, ‘Sapho’ has none of the cold rigorism of a thesis novel; the natural vivality of Daudet’s art, this broad current of human sympathy that lives up all his books, still confer today a certain interest in his work. On the other hand, we can find in it that probity in art, that search for truth and that rigor in analysis, which characterize the best novels of the second half of the 19th century”. (Dictionnaire des Œuvres, VI, 38).
A fine copy of this classic of provençal literature, bound with the original yellow wrappers in morocco with morocco doublures by Marius Michel.
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