Alphonse DAUDET (1840-1897) - Lot 50

Lot n° 50
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Alphonse DAUDET (1840-1897) - Lot 50
Alphonse DAUDET (1840-1897) Partially autograph manuscript, Soutien de famille, [1897]; set of 42 small in-4 notebooks (22,5 x 17, cm) of about 16 leaves each, plus 6 small in-4 leaves and 24 folio pages. Important set of manuscripts tracing the genesis of this novel, Daudet's last work. Completed in September 1897, this novel of "contemporary manners" was being published in L'Illustration when the author died suddenly on December 16; the volume edition was published by Fasquelle in 1898. Daudet had been struck by the suicide of a courageous craftsman, strangled by debts and the demands of his owner. This set shows well Daudet's working method, sketching his work with a difficult handwriting then dictating to his secretary André Ebner, before correcting the manuscripts with the help of his wife Julia. A. Autograph manuscript, 2 pink notebooks "1" (4 p.) and "3me cahier" (28 p.), "Livre premier", beginning of a first version, with erasures and corrections, starting with a letter from Levaillant (Pendules et bronzes d'art) to Mr. and Mrs. Herscher, dated May 4, 1882 Plus a "1er cahier" with this beginning cleaned up by Ebner (2 p.) followed by 17 autograph pages, abundantly erased and corrected. B. 3 quires numbered 1 and 3 (water green cover, pag. 1-15, 16-30, 31-46), a new beginning by Ebner, with autograph corrections: "There was rue Saint-Placide in the vicinity of Luxembourg, - I speak to you about ten years ago - a narrow store"...; in the "3rd quire" begins the chapter "II The Farjavel debt". C. Autograph manuscript: - Book 1 (7 pages small in-4 in black ink on laid paper), corresponding to the actual beginning of the novel ["Prelude. The youth of Raymond Eudeline"]: "A majestic hall boy passed by, carrying a lamp"...; - chap. 11 La dette Farjavel (24 ff. in-fol. written on the front in a sickly handwriting, with erasures and corrections): "From the first times of their installation in the Legislative Body, the wife of Izoard, a late acclimatized native of Nice, had found herself affected by a languid illness"... D. Set of 36 quires with water green cover numbered 1 to 35 and a 27 bis (16 ff. each) cleaned by André Ebner in black ink on the back of the leaves, with numerous and important corrections and additions by Julia Daudet on the front side, and autograph corrections by Alphonse Daudet in several quires. The quires 1 to 8, paginated 1-107, correspond to the Prelude. The following quires, which give the 14 chapters of the novel, are not paginated, except for the last three quires (33: 504-511 and 1-6; 34: 8-34; 35: 34bis-42bis). Alphonse Daudet has made autograph corrections and additions in quires 14, 15 (where the text is very much reworked), 19, 22, 27 and 27 bis, 31, and 32 to 35 (largely autograph). The manuscript of a theatrical adaptation in 4 acts (3 notebooks of 32, 32 and 11 pages), in the hand of André Ebner, with corrections and important autograph additions of Daudet, is joined.
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