Maggs Bros.

Very good, lacking any publisher’s advertisements which are sometimes found, contemporary ownership inscription to ffep. dated 1829, very slight spotting throughout. The first French translation of Faust and the first significant work by the French Romantic author Gérard de Nerval, completed when he was only twenty years of age. The translation was personally praised by Goethe, saying that “I really don’t like to read Faust again in German, but in this French translation everything seems fresh, new and intelligent”, and it was responsible for bringing Nerval to the attention of the leader of the Romantic movement in France, Victor Hugo. Nerval’s later work as author and poet, particularly his masterpiece Sylvie, would inspire Marcel Proust, André Breton considered him to be a precursor of the surrealists, and, of course, no cataloguer can fail to relate the story of Nerval’s pet lobster, whom he lovingly walked around Paris on a blue silk leash ‘I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don’t bark, and they don’t gnaw upon one’s monadic privacy like dogs do.’