Sylvie
Paris: Literary Society of France, 1919. Limited Edition. Small Quarto. Item #023935
Limited to 250 copies on velum from the Rives paper mills. The present copy is #113. Decorative color wood engravings by Robert Bonfils, printed by Emile Fequet on his hand press on December 1, 1919. Half-title, limitation page, 89 (1) pp. Along with the table and colophon. First published in a magazine in 1853. Later, it was published in book form in 1854. "Sylvie" has been hailed not only as a work that is the very quintessence of romantic sensibility but also as the forerunner of a trend seen later in France in Rimbaud, Proust, and the Surrealists that places a particularly high value on subjectivity and finds in dreams and memories the most satisfactory means of exploring reality. "Sylvie" takes the form of a first-person narrative, and though there is always a risk in identifying a narrator with the author of a work of fiction, there is no doubt that there is much of Nerval in the story. Bound in a snakeskin leather, pictorially stamped in gilt blocked in green, spine gilt over faded green with a couple of spots of staining, marbled endpapers, original decorative stiff paper wrappers bound in, top edge gilt, no names or bookplates, just a touch of bowing to boards.
Price: $400.00