Lot n° 95
Estimation :
400 - 500
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 1 500EUR
TENCIN (Claudine-Alexandrine Guérin, marquise of). - Lot 95
TENCIN (Claudine-Alexandrine Guérin, marquise of).
Memoirs of the Count of Comminge.
The Hague: J. Neaulme, 1735. - In-12, 159 x 93 : (3 ff.), 184 pp. Marbled calf, smooth spine decorated with gilt cats, red edges (period binding).
Rare first edition of this novel by Madame de Tencin (1682-1749), a woman of letters and famous salonniere.
"This short novel, whose plot evokes the adventure of Romeo and Juliet, describes the fearless and all-consuming love that is born between the young Count of Comminge and Adélaïde de Lussan, both marked by the hatred of their fathers. This love will only punctuate the steps of a funeral march. The sensitive souls, as in the great baroque novel, create the extraordinary circumstances which they need to know all their faculty to love and to suffer. Mme de Tencin, however, discreetly subverts the traditional data that the classical novel had bequeathed to the dawn of the Enlightenment: she gives her novel a melodramatic, pessimistic and at the same time protesting character. Modern criticism has indeed highlighted the double protest against society and male incomprehension on the one hand, and the effort to create a sublimated image of women on the other, which truly makes Mme de Tencin one of the first interpreters of French feminism" (presentation made by the Prodinnova editions on the occasion of the re-publication of the work in 2019).
The literary success of this novel was immediate and this one will know numerous reissues until our days, also under the title The Count of C. or the unhappy Lovers.
EXAMPLE OF THE MARQUISE MARIE DU DEFFAND (1697-1780), bearing her emblem on the back representing a sitting cat.
Marie du Deffand, born Marie de Vichy-Champrond, was a woman of letters. She married the marquis Du Deffand, lieutenant general of Orléans, when she left the convent. After her husband's death, she moved into the apartment formerly inhabited by Mme de Montespan where she received great lords, witty and cultured, as well as men of letters and science, such as the duke and duchess of Choiseul, the Boufflers, the duchess of La Vallière, Turgot, Loménie de Brienne, but also Fontenelle, Voltaire, Marmontel, Marivaux, Diderot, D'Alembert, Horace Walpole, etc.
The many letters she addressed to several of these personalities form a unique collection on the history of society in the 18th century.
Heads worn, hinges split, two corners dulled.
See for this same provenance the number 71.
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