VICTOR HUGO. Lot n° 38

Les Misérables. Paris, Pagnerre, 1862. 10 volumes in-8: jansenist red morocco, spine ribbed, gilt fillets on the spines and inner edges, mute covers and spine preserved, entirely untrimmed (René Aussourd). Paris first edition. Several books by Victor Hugo were published simultaneously in Paris and Brussels. Les Misérables went on sale on April 3, 1862 in Paris and on March 30 or 31 in Brussels. One of the very rare copies on large green laid paper, without any mention of the edition on the titles. Léopold Carteret points out that the edition was divided into several fictitious sections, including the copies on large paper. (Bibliothèque nationale, En français dans le texte, nº 275.- Clouzot, p. 150: "A few copies are on Hollande or on coloured paper, which can fetch very high prices. Some of them bear an edition note.") "This book brings the revolution forward by ten years." Les Misérables offers itself as the great social fresco that Romanticism dreamed of to tell the negativity of the century: "Someone has to take the side of the defeated," says the author. Popular success, despite the Parisian press's attacks on the republican outlaw from Guernsey. Victor Hugo ignored the critics, preferring to emphasize the judgment of Martin Bernard, one of the leaders of the republican insurrection of 1839 alongside Barbès and Blanqui: "This book brings the revolution forward by ten years." A worldwide success with multiple resonances, never denied. Malraux, in the Antimémoires, notes during the Spanish Civil War the "piles of Les Misérables between Bakunin and Tolstoy's theoretical writings, on the Ramblas of Barcelona". Very nice collection. The covers, preserved, are muted; they are of a water green wove paper.