DIDEROT, Denis.
Rameau's Nephew and Other Works.
London: Chapman & Hall, 1926.
$475.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-152740
Diderot's Rameau's Nephew and Other Works
Limited edition of this gathering one of the supreme satirical dialogues of the French Enlightenment. Octavo, original half-cloth over decorated paper boards, top edge gilt, beautifully printed at the celebrated Curwen Press. One of only 1,000 numbered copies, this is number 108. In near fine condition. Translated from the French by Mrs. Wilfrid Jackson. Introduction by Compton Mackenzie. Bookplate to the front pastedown. A handsome production from the XVIII Century French Romances series.
Le Neveu de Rameau, or Rameau’s Nephew, is Denis Diderot’s brilliant and subversive dialogue between a philosopher and the cynical, parasitic nephew of the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau, a mordant meditation on genius, morality, hypocrisy, and the compromises of society. Diderot (1713-1784), the driving force behind the great Encyclopédie and one of the boldest minds of the Enlightenment, wrote and revised the work in secret and never published it in his lifetime. The manuscript vanished after his death, and the dialogue first reached the world in 1805 in a German translation by Goethe, before the original French text was finally printed in the 1820s. Hegel quoted it in the Phenomenology of Spirit, and it has since been admired by readers from Marx to Freud as one of the most original works of the eighteenth century.
Rameau's Nephew and Other Works.
$475.00
In Stock