Xavier FORNERET. Pièce de pièces. Temps perdu.... Lot n° 17

Xavier FORNERET. Piece of pieces. Temps perdu. Paris, E. Duverger, 1840. In-8, (6) ff, 302 pp, (1) f. table : half-tobacco morocco with corners, smooth spine with gold and cold decoration, untrimmed, covers and spine preserved (Vermorel). First edition. Printed in large type on the front pages only, with ample white margins, in accordance with the author's wish "to have white in his pages", printed at the head. The collection includes Xavier Forneret's best-known text, Le Diamant de l'herbe, described as a masterpiece by Charles Monselet as early as 1859. A signed autograph letter to Charles Monselet, addressed from Beaune on March 23, 1853 (3 pages in-8 on mourning paper), is bound at the head. A long and interesting letter to his "obliging and devoted sentinel in Paris", evoking a theatrical project and his difficult relations with publishers: I beg your pardon for having frightened Mr. Marc Fournier's friendship for you, to the point of leaving you without any news from him until now; for, obviously, I am the cause of this : He senses, with good reason, that you wish to see him on my account; but I hope that later, on yours, you will not have to suffer. So let's leave Mr. Directeur de la Porte-St-Martin, who won't answer your questions. [...] Let's turn to Mr Vernon, that is, the Ambigu or the Gaîté. I'll write to him directly, but nevertheless, I'd like you to see him; then they'll know that you're an obliging and devoted sentinel in Paris, and I'll gain a salutary effect, I judge. I can't be hurt by what the two booksellers have said; they only see speculation, that's natural; and besides, it's happened to me that they no longer say [sic] dumb as a goose - but dumb as a bear. [...] He asks his correspondent for news of his forthcoming books, then explains the reasons for his break with Giraud, a bookseller-publisher on rue Vivienne, from whom Charles Monselet has been commissioned to collect the manuscript of a verse play: [...] I don't want you to think that I wanted to eat Mr Giraud alive, and his fury only proves to me that he was at fault with me. If Mr Giraud, instead of failing (purely and simply) to keep his word, after having wasted my time, had written to me: "Monsieur, I cannot, given my lack of credit in Paris, print your verse piece, without an advance from you to pay the printer, but I'm sticking with what I promised you, I'm editing on my own account, etc.", I'd have been able to print it. It is to be presumed that I would have remained on good terms with Mr. Giraud, but this has not been the case. Mr Giraud no longer wants to publish under the conditions agreed at first; he wants me to take the small matter, as others say, entirely in hand. He goes on to copy the letter of rupture addressed to the publisher. Charles Monselet was the first to distinguish the black man's extraordinary work, notably Le Diamant de l'herbe: "The strange, the mysterious, the gentle, the terrible, have never married under a pen with such intensity" (Le Roman d'un provincial, article published in Le Figaro on July 26, 1859). His judgment would be applauded a century later by André Breton in Minotaure (1937). A fine copy bound in full margins by Vermorel. Restoration to printed cover.