BESENVAL, Pierre-Victor de.
Spleen and Other Stories.
London: Chapman & Hall, 1927.
$95.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-152739
First Edition of Besenval's Spleen and Other Stories; Translated by Oscar Wilde's Son Vyvyan Holland
First edition in English of a collection of eighteenth-century French tales by Pierre-Victor, Baron de Besenval, the Swiss-born courtier and memoirist of the court of Louis XVI.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 58. Near fine in the original patterned dust jacket which is in very good condition. Translated by H.B.V., the pen name of Vyvyan Holland, younger son of Oscar Wilde. Introduction by Havelock Ellis. A charming production from the XVIII Century French Romances series.
Spleen and Other Stories (1927) presents five tales by Pierre-Victor, Baron de Besenval: "Spleen," "The Soldier Lovers," "Alonzo," "The Hermit," and "A Spanish Story." All of which first appeared posthumously in 1806 in the Mélanges littéraires et historiques, which formed the fourth and last volume of Besenval's collected works. Besenval himself was a fascinating figure of the ancien régime, a Swiss-born Baron who served as a Lieutenant General in the French army, moved in the most glittering circles of Versailles, and left behind memoirs that constitute a vivid primary document of life at the French court in the years leading up to the Revolution, making his fiction a natural companion to those memoirs in illuminating the social and moral atmosphere of the world that 1789 swept away. The stories themselves are characteristic products of the libertine and sentimental tradition of eighteenth-century French prose fiction, combining elegant psychological observation with the wit, irony, and discreet eroticism that defined the literary culture of the Versailles court.
Spleen and Other Stories.
$95.00
In Stock