BARBEY D'AUREVILLY (Jules)
Les Diaboliques. Les six premières. Paris, Alphonse Lemerre, 1882. In-12, cream shaped leather, red fillet crossing at the corners framing the boards, smooth spine decorated with a gilt fleuron, red title page, red head, untrimmed (Period binding).
Second edition.
Copy of the current edition on ordinary paper.
Superb autograph letter from the author, signed in red ink on the title page:
To my great friend Paul Haag, always the machine gun of my novels:
Les Diaboliques, those younger sisters of an Old Mistress
Mistress, even worse than the elder sister.
J. Barbey d'Aurevilly.
Writer and civil engineer Paul Haag (1843-1911) was very close to François Coppée and Barbey. It was he who wrote the preface to Poésies posthumes (Lemerre, 1879) by the young poet Henri-Charles Read, the younger brother of Louise Read, the devoted secretary of the Connétable des lettres. Paul Haag's library was sold in 1911.
The mailing is reproduced by Bonnefon in Les Dédicaces à la main de M. J. Barbey d'Aurevilly, p.64.
Hinges slightly rubbed
