[iv], 248, [4] pp. Portrait dry point etching frontispiece. Title printed in red and black. (12mo) 19x12 cm (7½x4¾"), later three-quarter tan morocco and marbled boards, raised bands, spine lettered in gilt, top edge gilt. First Edition, First Issue. Rare first issue of Baudelaire's most famous work, a book of lyric poetry expressing the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrializing Paris during the mid-19th century. This first issue contains the six suppressed poems: "Les Bijoux", "Le Léthé", "A celle qui est trop gaie", "Lesbos", "Femmes damnées", and "Les Métamorphoses du vampire". With the following issue points: "Feurs" in the headline on pp. 31 and 108; with p. 45 misnumbered 44, and with the last word of the first line on p. 201 "captieux" instead of "capiteux." The first edition of Les Fleurs du mal consisted of 1,300 copies, 200 of which were seized and mutilated after the six "notorious" poems were censored. "When Les Fleurs du Mal was published in book form in late June 1857 its often scabrous and sacrilegious content immediately attracted the attention of the authorities, and on 20 August 1857 Baudelaire was fined 300 francs by the Sixième Chambre Correctionnelle for ‘outrage à la morale publique’; in addition, six poems in the collection were ordered to be suppressed. Baudelaire was adamant that his ‘livre atroce’ was not ‘un pur album’ and that the individual poems yielded their full significance only when read within the ‘cadre singulier’ in which he had set them. Introduced by the celebrated dedicatory piece ‘Au lecteur’, the 100 poems of the 1857 edition were divided into five sequences or ‘chapters’ (‘Spleen et Idéal’, ‘Fleurs du mal’, ‘Révolte’, ‘Le Vin’, and ‘La Mort’) Les Fleurs du mal records, in poetry in which lyricism and irony are fused, the quest of divided modern man for an ‘ideal’—variously sought in art, eroticism, travel, drugs, and political, social, and metaphysical revolt—that forever eludes him, plunging him back into the agony of isolation and despair that Baudelaire called ‘spleen’. Oscillating from one extreme to another, the quest is open-ended, ever to be renewed, and takes the seeker beyond the realms of life and death ‘au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau’ (‘Le Voyage’)" (The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French).
[iv], 248, [4] pp. Portrait dry point etching frontispiece. Title printed in red and black. (12mo) 19x12 cm (7½x4¾"), later three-quarter tan morocco and marbled boards, raised bands, spine lettered in gilt, top edge gilt. First Edition, First Issue. Rare first issue of Baudelaire's most famous work, a book of lyric poetry expressing the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrializing Paris during the mid-19th century. This first issue contains the six suppressed poems: "Les Bijoux", "Le Léthé", "A celle qui est trop gaie", "Lesbos", "Femmes damnées", and "Les Métamorphoses du vampire". With the following issue points: "Feurs" in the headline on pp. 31 and 108; with p. 45 misnumbered 44, and with the last word of the first line on p. 201 "captieux" instead of "capiteux." The first edition of Les Fleurs du mal consisted of 1,300 copies, 200 of which were seized and mutilated after the six "notorious" poems were censored. "When Les Fleurs du Mal was published in book form in late June 1857 its often scabrous and sacrilegious content immediately attracted the attention of the authorities, and on 20 August 1857 Baudelaire was fined 300 francs by the Sixième Chambre Correctionnelle for ‘outrage à la morale publique’; in addition, six poems in the collection were ordered to be suppressed. Baudelaire was adamant that his ‘livre atroce’ was not ‘un pur album’ and that the individual poems yielded their full significance only when read within the ‘cadre singulier’ in which he had set them. Introduced by the celebrated dedicatory piece ‘Au lecteur’, the 100 poems of the 1857 edition were divided into five sequences or ‘chapters’ (‘Spleen et Idéal’, ‘Fleurs du mal’, ‘Révolte’, ‘Le Vin’, and ‘La Mort’) Les Fleurs du mal records, in poetry in which lyricism and irony are fused, the quest of divided modern man for an ‘ideal’—variously sought in art, eroticism, travel, drugs, and political, social, and metaphysical revolt—that forever eludes him, plunging him back into the agony of isolation and despair that Baudelaire called ‘spleen’. Oscillating from one extreme to another, the quest is open-ended, ever to be renewed, and takes the seeker beyond the realms of life and death ‘au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau’ (‘Le Voyage’)" (The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French).
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
