Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) - photo 1

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

Lot 94
15.12.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
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£ 10 080
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1108893
Lot 94 | Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Estimate value
£ 7 000 – 10 000
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Autograph manuscript, notes on the Essais and Journal de voyage of Michel de Montaigne, n.d. [?c.1838-1845]
In French. The notes on the Essais comprising 51½ pages, approx. 220 x 175mm, plus a few blanks, in a wrapper with autograph title 'Notes – Montaigne / 1er Livre'; the notes on the Journal de voyage comprising autograph title ('Journal des Voyages de Montaigne') and 18 pages, approx. 220 x 175mm. With an early typed transcript of the notes on the Essais. Provenance: Gustave Flaubert – by descent to his niece, Caroline Franklin Grout-Flaubert (1846-1931) – her sale (the 'Vente Flaubert'), Antibes, 28-30 avril 1931, lot 30; Sotheby's London, 27 November 1980, lot 345.

Flaubert's reading notes on the works of his 'père nourricier', Michel de Montaigne. The notes are a remarkable record of Flaubert's engagement with a writer with whom he felt a strong affinity, exclaiming in a letter of 1853 to Louise Colet that 'We have the same tastes, the same opinions, the same way of life, the same obsessions'; in the same letter he recalls that at the age of 18 he spent an entire year 'in which I read only him'. The dating of the present notes is very likely from that period, or the few years following.

The notes are characterised by Timothy Chesters ('Flaubert's reading notes on Montaigne'. French Studies 63 (Oct. 4, 2009): 399-415) as 'essentially a commonplace book. There are 270 quotations from the Essais, carefully transcribed and sometimes underlined for emphasis. Just occasionally Flaubert himself intervenes: to comment, paraphrase or direct the reader's gaze — that is, his own, future gaze — to a particular paragraph or page. The notes on the Journal follow a similar pattern, though Flaubert, who himself travelled through Italy in 1845, has also drawn up a complete list of the places Montaigne visited en route'. The notes on the Essais cover books I, II and III (to III.5). According to Chesters, one can identify Flaubert's reading edition of the Essais as Joseph-Victor Leclerc's 1836 two-volume octavo (the copy still held in Flaubert's surviving library at Canteleu); Flaubert's own notes identify his copy of the Journal de voyage as Meunier de Querlon's two-volume duodecimo edition of 1774.
Artist:Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880)
Place of origin:France
Auction house category:Letters, documents and manuscripts
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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United Kingdom
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