BARBEY D’AUREVILLY Jules Les Prophètes du passé.

Talvart & Place, I, 213:6A; Clouzot, 37 (‘very rare’).

Partly first edition, published at the expense of Guillaume-Stanislas Trébutien. It contains studies on Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, François-René de Chateaubriand and Félicité de Lamennais. The work opens with a dedication to Baroness Almaury de Maistre, a composer and woman of the world who held a literary salon. Barbey offers her his friendship and underlines his relationship with Joseph de Maistre, who begins the essay.

Printed in a very restircted numbver of copies, small edition, the present copy is one of the few on strong wove paper (see also the note by Talvart & Place).

Les Prophètes du passé (Prophets of the Past) is one of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s first essays, mixing philosophy and religion, and right from the preface he evokes the idea of an evil inherent in man, a heresy that responds to theology. This doctrine enjoyed a certain popularity in the 19th century, and resonates with what Baudelaire wrote a few years later in the preface to Poe’s Nouvelles Histoires Extraordinaires, which he translated. 

An exceptional copy, enriched with an autograph monogrammed inscription ‘au propagandiste du vrai, / au Machiavel-Capucin, mon digne & / révérend ami, Frère Poncet Deville, / hommage de l’auteur, J.B.D’A’. This was Alexandre-Gabreil Poncet-Deville, a Bordeaux wine merchant and friend of the author. In his correspondence, he described him to Trébutien as ‘a man full of nobility and devotion to me […] he is a well-thinking head and the most ardent of ardent Catholics’. Curiously, the letter is written on the upper part of the cover (the lower part is truncated), mounted on the false title on which another letter from the author can be guessed.

This copy also bears an autograph correction in red ink on page XXIII.