199 - DESBORDES-VALMORE (Marceline), 1786–1859.

DESBORDES-VALMORE (Marceline), 1786–1859. Autograph letter signed "Mme Desb. Valm.," undated (Brussels, December 9, 1818), 3 pp., small quarto (small red collector’s stamp), to Mr. Louis, 8 Rue Hautefeuille (with handwritten address). An important letter addressed to her publisher François Louis providing the final corrections to the poem “L’Arbrisseau,” which opens the poet’s first collection, “Elégies, Marie et Romances,” written while she was an actress at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. A rare glimpse into her poetic process, blending an attention to musicality with a focus on the truth of the image. She also requests the removal of the elegy “La Colère” and mentions Dr. Alibert’s impatience with the slow pace of printing. She herself, on the contrary, would have preferred to delay the book’s publication even further: “[...] If I’d had more time, I would have removed many of Marie’s unnecessary frills, or added [...]” The entire work was proofread under difficult conditions: ill for three days, preoccupied with the theater, and forced to perform “in a freezing hall, exposed to the elements,” she confesses to having carried out this final revision “amidst migraines and studies.” Dr. Jean-Louis Alibert (1768–1837), a renowned physician at Saint-Louis Hospital and future personal physician to Louis XVIII, played a decisive role in Desbordes-Valmore’s literary debut: it was he who introduced her to François Louis and encouraged the publication of this first collection, the printing of which he eagerly followed. Marceline paid tribute to him by dedicating *L’Arbrisseau*—placed at the beginning of the volume—to him, a work that marked her true entry into literature. Includes its original cultural property export certificate from the Ministry of Culture.