Marceline DESBORDES-VALMORE.
Une raillerie de l'amour. Paris, Charpentier, 1833.
Small in-8, brown half calf, spine ribbed with gilt fillets, red morocco title page, marbled edges (pastiche binding).
First edition : copy of first issue. It does not contain the advertisement booklet.
Autograph signed on the false title:
To Mélanie Waldor/by her friend/Marceline Valmore.
Remarkable provenance reuniting the two great female figures of French romanticism.
Novelist, poet and playwright, Mélanie Waldor (1796-1871) held a salon frequented, among others, by Hugo, Nerval and Musset. She had a famous affair with Alexandre Dumas, transposed by the latter in Antony, a drama played in 1831. As for her elder by ten years, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786-1859) she was, says Vigny, "the greatest female spirit of her time". Immediately recognized by her peers as an authentic voice, Verlaine will make her appear among the cursed Poets.
The copy then passed into the collection of the Hugolâtre Paul Meurice (1808-1905), with bookplate.
Another armorial bookplate with the motto "in libro libertas". Some spotting.
