BARBUSSE (Henri).

Le Feu.

Three hundred and twentieth thousand. 8vo., modern quarter brown morocco, original wrappers bound in. Paris, Ernest Flammarion. N.d. c, 1920.

£500.00

Inscribed by the author, “A Madame von Winternitz-Zweig et aux femmes de coeur qui l’entourent [and to the courageous women who surround her] hommage dévoué Henri Barbusse”. One of the greatest anti-war novels inscribed to Friderike Maria Winternitz Zweig, the first wife of Stefan Zweig, himself one of the most eloquent writers for peace in Europe. Friderike, who was indeed a femme de coeur, beautiful, strong-minded and intelligent, was already a writer when she met Stefan Zweig in 1908. By 1916 they were living together just outside Vienna, (in a diary entry for late 1916 Friderike writes: “Today Stefan named me as his permanent ‘top bunny’. I don’t wish for anything more, and if he occasionally enjoys a subordinate bunny, that’s fine by me … Just as long as I am always his top bunny”) and by 1919 were married, although in a bizarre detail of Austrian civil ceremony, Friderike did not have to be there at her own wedding, and sent a male representative instead.

She continued her writing career as well as supporting him, for he was by choice incapable of doing much practical work. In the early 1930s he took up with his younger and less independent secretary (one wonders if Friderike would have lain down to die on the marital suicide bed in 1942, as did Lottie), and they were divorced in 1938. In 1917 Zweig published his Jeremiah, an explicitly pacifist play, dedicated to Friderike “in profound gratitude”, and reviewed Le Feu in the Austrian press. He and Barbusse worked together on several anti-war projects after the war. An excellent copy, original wrappers lightly soiled, rubbing to head and tail of spine, pages browned, last few pages stamped through in bottom corner, not affecting the text.

Stock No.
132622