109 - FLAUBERT, Gustave. *L'Éducation sentimentale*.

FLAUBERT, Gustave. *L'Éducation sentimentale*. Paris, Michel Lévy frères, 1870. In-8 (22 x 15 cm), brown half-basane, ribbed spine decorated with repeated gilt fleurons. Title gilt on a red leather label. Name in gilt letters (C. Vitnauer) on the tail. 2 vols.: 427 pp. - 331 pp. Scuffing and foxing. The first edition of *L'Education sentimentale* in a contemporary binding. A rare copy with no edition information on the title pages. The story of a young man, begun in late 1863 and written from September 1864 to May 1869, *L’Éducation sentimentale* was published in November 1869. Although rich in autobiographical details, the work bears no resemblance to the early novel written under this title in 1845. The enchanting presence of Madame Arnoux, who dominates the entire work just as Madame Schlesinger dominated Flaubert’s thoughts, undoubtedly makes this novel an irrefutable testimony to the writer’s emotional life, with the interplay and overlap of dream and reality of which this work is the bitter and searing fruit. Woven from reality and imagination, “L’Éducation” is also the moral history of the men who lived under the July Monarchy, and an evocation of all of Parisian life in the fifth decade of the nineteenth century—that political and social ferment that led to the Revolution of 1848 and the coup d’état. “How can we fail today to recognize in this quintessentially Flaubertian book—and in this work, which is Goethean in its scope—one of the seminal works of modern literature, which has since inspired so many imitations of this melancholic hero? Certain passages, such as those describing the lovers’ reunion at the end of the novel, rank among the purest and most lyrical in Flaubert’s entire body of work.” (Vicaire, *Manual for Lovers of 19th-Century Books*, 726). Complete in two volumes.