Oct 14, 2010 - Sale 2225

Sale 2225 - Lot 113

Price Realized: $ 2,400
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
SCARCE WORK [VERLAINE, PAUL.] Les Amies. Sonnets par le licencié Pablo de Herlagnez. Printed in red and black. 16, [2] pages. 8vo, 3/4 green morocco, joints and extremities rubbed; original green wrappers bound in, top edge gilt, others partially trimmed. Segovia [Brussels, Poulet-Malassis], 1868
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Additional Details

number 11 of only 44 copies on holland from a total edition of 50. One of the most controversial imprints of 19th-century French literature.
Verlaine's sapphic sonnets were published under a pseudonym at the instigation of François Coppée, as the author revealed in a letter to Poulet-Malassis on 8 October 1867 (see Pascal Pia, Les livres de l'enfer. 1978, I, 33). When some copies of the work were seized at the French border, publisher Poulet-Malassis was condemned to a year's imprisonment and a fine of 500 francs. The Lille tribunal on May 6, 1868 ordered the destruction of the entire printing but Verlaine was protected by his pseudonym and expressed his gratitude to the publisher for printing ''ses pauvres sonnets en rimes feminines.'' Another edition appeared in 1870 with the same false imprint, and the sonnets were reprinted in the collection Parallelement in 1889. Vicaire, VII, 989; Carteret II, 415.