Léon BLOY Lot n° 12

The Funeral of Naturalism. Public lectures. Copenhagen, G.E.C. Gad, university bookseller, 1891. In-18 of 24 pp, paperback, printed cover, brown morocco spine folder, slipcase (not signed but executed by Alix). First edition, printed "in a very small number" (Laquerrière-Bollery, 11). Bloy had been asked to give a series of lectures in Denmark on the theme, chosen by him, of the Funerals of Naturalism. This inaugural lecture was the only one published. A very rare copy, preserved in paperback, in perfect condition. Small trace of discharge on the title and on the back of the last leaf. Enclosed: [Les Funérailles du naturalisme]. Number 50 of the review La Plume. Paris, Bureaux de la revue, May 15, 1891. Large issue in-8 of (8) ff. paginated [159]-176 (with an error in the pagination, which changes without missing from 166 to 169), in printed yellow cover, bradel paperback with the gilt title on a lavaliered morocco label on the first cover and the mention La Plume - 1891 on the back (Honnelaître). The six lectures given by Bloy in Denmark in 1891 on the theme of the Funeral of naturalism that followed the inaugural lecture (see previous issue) were never published. The bibliographers Laquerrière and Bollery were not even aware of their existence: "the lecture that Léon Bloy gave at the Sprogforening on March 20, 1891 [...] was to be followed by others which, alas! never took place" (Laquerrière-Bollery, 11). Only the second of these conferences, devoted to Emile Zola, was partially reproduced in the present issue of La Plume, a journal to which Bloy collaborated from April 1890 to February 1892, publishing 21 articles, some of which were reprinted in 1905 in Belluaires et Porchers. While recognizing his "immense role", Bloy gives himself over to a scourge of the leader of the naturalists, qualified as "Napoleon of the mire". Directed by Léon Deschamps, the young review La Plume, created in 1889, was the organ of the group that was to become a few years later the Catholic Renewal. It was published every two weeks. Its contributors were very diverse: Bloy, Barbey, Huysmans, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Verlaine, but also Richepin or Bourget. Deschamps, who did not have the means to pay his authors, "paid them in satisfaction of vanity" (M. Bardèche), publishing in each issue a monograph of one of the contributors, sometimes accompanied by a beautiful detachable portrait... By chance or by derision, the portrait given here as a supplement to the readers is that of... Emile Zola. Attached: - La Plume, number 25. Paris, 36 boulevard Arago, May 1st 1890. Large folio in-8 of (4) ff. paginated [71] - 80 (the pagination goes without missing from 74 to 77), under yellow cover illustrated with a vignette by V. Meurein, bradel cardboard bearing the gilt title on a lavaliered morocco label on the first cover and the mention La Plume - 1890 on the back (Honnelaître) Contains in pre-original edition Le fumier des Lys, evocation of Naundorff's fi ls, which will appear in bookstores only six years later, in the first French edition of La Chevalière de la mort (see issue). - La Plume, number 26, May 15, 1890, paperback, 8 pp. in printed cover with vignette Contains an article by Bloy, Le reportage littéraire, dedicated to Maurice de Fleury, psychiatrist and man of letters, friend of Zola and of the naturalists and columnist at his hours at the Figaro : " it is a very adorable thing that the need to spread copies, when one does not have a single idea under the dome... ". - La Plume, number 35, October 1, 1890, stapled, 8 pp. under a printed cover with vignette. Exceptional issue dedicated to Catholics - Mystics. The notice on Léon Bloy is accompanied by an open letter of the latter to Charles Buet.