BARBEY D’AUREVILLY Jules Memoranda. Préface de Paul Bourget.

Talvart & Place, I, 13D.

New edition of the Memorandum (first published in 1856).

In the preface, Paul Bourget outlines the contents of this work : “Les cahiers de notes intimes auxquels M. Barbey d’Aurevilly a donné le titre de Memoranda se rapportent à l’époque de sa vie d’écrivain qui fut le plus fécond en œuvres. N’est-ce pas aux environs de ces années-là que la Vieille Maîtresse successivement et L’Ensorcelée et les Ricochets de Conversation – devenus dans Les Diaboliques et après coup le Dessous des cartes d’une partie de Whist – furent publiées ?”.

An exceptional copy, enriched with a fine incription in two-tone red and gold ink : “à monsieur de Ronchaud, au plus délicat des esprits. Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly”.

Barbey d’Aurevilly and Louis de Ronchaud were both members of the literary salon of Clarisse Coignet (1824-1918), a friend and correspondent of Charles Fourier. Louise Ackermann, Marie d’Agoult (Daniel Stern), Louis de Ronchaud, Barbey d’Aurevilly and other leading figures met in her republican salon.

Although Memoranda was a response to the fashion for publishing diaries at the end of the century, it is unusual in that it was always intended for publication and at the request of the author’s family, unlike the diaries of Delacroix or Benjamin Constant, which were published posthumously. The first Memorendum was written in Caen in 1856 at the request of his lifelong friend Guillaume-Stanislas Trébutien.

The location of the beginning of his memoirs is important. Not only did Barbey always remain attached to his native Normandy, but it was also in Caen that Trébutien published some of his friend’s works at his own expense (including La bague d’Annibal and Les Prophètes du passé). Trébutien is omnipresent in Barbey d’Aurevilly’s abundant correspondence. A translator, editor and scholar, he advised, reread and sometimes guided him. Unfortunately, the two friends fell out in 1858.

The second Memorendum begins in 1858 and recounts Barbey d’Aurevilly’s trip to the Pyrenees with ‘L’Ange Blanc’, the Baroness de Bouglon whom he met in 1851 in the salon of Baroness Almaury de Maistre.

A very fine copy.