ID 1108999
Lot 199 | Stefan Zweig (1881-1942)
Estimate value
£ 1 500 – 2 500
Autograph letter signed (‘Stefan Zweig’) to [Simon] Kra, Salzburg, 8 February 1926
In French. 1½ pages, 284 x 221mm, bearing Zweig’s monogram. Provenance: Sotheby's, 21 May 1998, lot 119.
A source on Zweig’s reading interests and a rare example of a privately owned letter from him to his French publisher, the majority of which are in the British Library. Zweig writes to Simon Kra, a French publisher and bookseller, requesting several titles from him. He has already received copies of works by Henri Murger and Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne (‘très content!’). He further requires a book on Ben Jonson by Maurice Castelain [Ben Jonson: L'Homme et l'oeuvre, 1572 – 1637, Paris, 1907] and Marcel Poète’s Une vie de cité: Paris [published by Auguste Picard (Paris, 1924)]. He is curious about prices, having heard that another buyer paid 9,000 francs for an edition of Baudelaire – ‘assez pour un poème!’. He sends 1,000 francs to be placed on his account. He concludes with an apology for the hurried message: ‘Excusez la hâte! Je suis très pressé: 38 lettres a répondre’.
Simon Kra’s publishing house, the Éditions du Sagittaire, had published André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. In 1927, he published a French version of Zweig’s Drei Meister (‘Three Masters’, 1920) as Deux grands romanciers du XIXe siècle: Balzac-Dickens in 1927.
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