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CHODERLOS DE LACLOS, Pierre.
Dangerous Liaisons, or Letters Collected within a Society, & Published for the Instruction of Others.
Published in Amsterdam and available in Paris from Durand Neveu, 1782.
Fees include commission and taxes.
Dangerous Liaisons, or Letters Collected within a Society, & Published for the Instruction of Others.
Published in Amsterdam and available in Paris from Durand Neveu, 1782.
4 volumes in 2 parts, small 12mo (170 x 95 mm), comprising (3)-248 pp., (3)-242 pp.; (3)-231 pp. and (3)-257 pp., plus 1 p.
Contemporary marbled and grained fawn sheepskin, ribbed spine decorated with gilt floral panels, title and volume number labels, cold-stamped gilt border on the covers, large gilt coat of arms on the lower spine, gilded fillet on the edges, red edges, marbled endpapers of the tourbillon type (a few scattered foxing spots, slight surface wear on the covers skilfully restored, edges slightly rubbed, small, discreet repairs to the slightly rubbed spines).
An extremely rare first edition of Type A.
Laclos’s epistolary novel was so successful that the 2,000 copies published in April 1782 sold out within a month.
A genuine first-printing original according to Max Brun’s classification, featuring half-titles with a full stop, the Rousseau quotation between two curved lines on the title page, and the errata on the reverse of p. 257 of Volume IV (“Bibliography of editions of Les Liaisons dangereuses bearing the date 1782”, Le Livre et l'Estampe, 1963)
“On 16 March 1782, Choderlos de Laclos signed a contract with the publisher Durand Neveu for the printing of 2,000 copies of his manuscript of *Les Liaisons dangereuses*. […] The novel was a resounding success. Under the date 1782, at least 16 different editions appeared; some were legitimate, others counterfeits” (Max Brun).
A copy from the library of the Duke of Aumont, bearing his coat of arms on the spine.
Louis-Marie Augustin de Rochebaron, Duke of Aumont (1709–1782), First Gentleman of the King’s Chamber, Venerable of the Parisian Bussy-Aumont Lodge (one of the first, circa 1730), whose extensive collection in his private mansion on Place Louis XV (now the Hôtel de Crillon) was dispersed at his death during a public auction.
Laclos, who had ‘resolved to write a work (...) that would cause a stir, and which would still resound across the earth once [he] had passed from it, won his bet (...) A bible of libertinism for some, the book stands as a masterpiece of the analytical novel (...) The ideologue in Laclos is fascinated by the mechanisms of intelligence and will, which he never perceives at work more clearly than in these perfectly polite villains, the poisonous flowers of a refined and decadent society (...) Thus the audacity of *Les Liaisons* lies neither in the facile debauchery of crude language, nor in the overt perversity or the pleasure of doing evil, characteristic of Sade, but in the art of saying it—or rather, of writing it—for an admiring yet slightly offended connoisseur, placed in the position of a voyeur, like the reader. The gunner has combined the ballistics of these letters that aim for the heart; the artist has arranged the interweaving of a skilful polyphony (...) This libertinism of the mind finds its antidote and its defeat in the already Stendhalian tenderness of the president (...) This libertine novel is also a love story in which one dies of love.” L. Versini, En français dans le texte.