[BALZAC (Honoré de)]. Research on Balzac's... - Lot 21 - Ader

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[BALZAC (Honoré de)]. Research on Balzac's... - Lot 21 - Ader
[BALZAC (Honoré de)]. Research on Balzac's "Comptes Noirs". In French, typed and handwritten documents (in ink) or annotations in blue pencil. France, 1920-1930's. Hanging files in a wooden cabinet with 8 drawers . Number of drawers: 8, one of which is damaged. Number of suspended files : about 1400 (some of them are empty but captioned) Copper plate engraved and nailed on the piece of furniture : To Marcel BOUTERON / The Black Accounts of BALZAC / His Friend : René BOUVIER. Dimensions of the piece of furniture : 113 x 79,2 x 43 cmRare set of transcriptions (typescripts and manuscripts), classified and analyzed, sometimes commented, documentation that served the scholars Bouvier and Maynial to establish their study Les comptes dramatiques de Balzac (Paris, Fernand Sorlot, 1938), from the archives of the viscount of Spoelberch de Lovenjoul (Chantilly, Bibl. de l'Institut), but also from other documents, some of which are privately held and difficult to trace today . Preserved in a dedicated cabinet, this archive was bequeathed to two eminent Balzacians, first Marcel Bouteron, then Francis Ambrière. It would benefit from being resumed to continue to nourish our renewed knowledge of Balzac's personal and professional accounts and projects. The documents contained in this cabinet, whose contents we will detail later, were used to write the book by René Bouvier (1883-1954) and Edmond Maynial (1879-1966) published under the title Les comptes dramatiques de Balzac, Paris, Fernand Sorlot, 1938. René Bouvier will later publish an article, "Balzac, homme d'affaires", in Revue des deux mondes, vol. 9, no. 34 (May 1949), pp. 41-62. This study, precise and complete, reports the money life of the great writer, his debts, his accounts, his budget, his financial enterprises. It will be recalled that Balzac had started a printing business, with a more than mitigated success (his printing house is located at 12 rue des Marais Saint-Germain, now rue Visconti in Paris, 6th district). The financial difficulties of Balzac's printing house and foundry are mainly due to the economic crisis of 1826-1830: in April 1828, the liabilities of his printing house amount to 113 000 francs and Balzac is forced to sell. The considerable work of transcription and compilation by Bouvier and Maynial was made possible by the collection of a Balzac enthusiast, Viscount Spoelberch de Lovenjoul (1836-1907), whose collections were bequeathed to the Institut de France and preserved in Chantilly [see C. Gaviglio-Faivre d'Arcier, "De la collecte à la mise en valeur du patrimoine littéraire du XIXe siècle. Le vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul et les héritiers de George Sand", in Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des chartes, t. 160, 2002, pp. 271-297]. The documents gathered in this cabinet by René Bouvier were later entrusted to Marcel Bouteron, a great scholar and specialist of Balzac whose library and personal archives reflect his interest in Balzac, his life and his works. These documents are typed and/or handwritten transcriptions of archives compiled or collected by Baron de Lovenjoul. They were used to compile the co-authored work by Bouteron and Maynial, Les comptes dramatiques de Balzac (Paris, 1938), but not all the documents are used in the publication. The archive is still of great interest to Balzac studies and deserves further study. In the files, the typed and handwritten cards are arranged: - By chronological order of years and months. - In alphabetical order of the names of all the people who had business or financial dealings with Balzac. One will quote for example a file PLON EDITEUR; a file GERVAIS CHARPENTIER (1838-1845), for Charpentier libraire; a file CURMER etc. There are other person files, for example mmE VEUVE DE BALZAC (Balzac's mother); mmE HANSKA; DOCTEUR NAQUART and passim. - By "questions", i.e. according to the main budgetary or financial episodes, which were the subject of this study. For example, a file numbered A 245 - Affaire de la Comédie humaine; a file numbered A 256 - Affaires de librairie et d'impression; a file numbered A 258 - Le Molière & le Lafontaine; a file numbered A 259 - Imprimerie & Fonderie de Balzac...; a file numbered A 260 - Fonderie des caractères. Acts of Society, Leases etc.; a folder A 269 - Treaties of Honoré de Balzac with his publishers; a folder A 352 - Last illness - Death, funeral & will of Honoré de Balzac, etc. Joint : Tapuscript with some handwritten corrections. BOUVIER (René), Balzac, homme d'affaires (1e cahier), 151 pp. + Balzac, homme d'affaires (2e cahier), suite pp. 152-307. Typescript preserved in cardboard folders. With a typed letter from René Bouvier to Marcel Bouteron, in an envelope
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