Item #178 Adolphe, Anecdote Trouvée dans les Papiers d’un Inconnu. Benjamin Constant.
Adolphe, Anecdote Trouvée dans les Papiers d’un Inconnu
Adolphe, Anecdote Trouvée dans les Papiers d’un Inconnu
Adolphe, Anecdote Trouvée dans les Papiers d’un Inconnu
Adolphe, Anecdote Trouvée dans les Papiers d’un Inconnu
Adolphe, Anecdote Trouvée dans les Papiers d’un Inconnu

Adolphe, Anecdote Trouvée dans les Papiers d’un Inconnu

Publisher: Paris: Chez Dauthereau, Libraire, Rue Richelieu No. 17, 1828.

Edition: Fourth edition

Binding: Contemporary calf, gilt border tooling, ornamental gilt to spine compartments, raised bands, marbled endpapers. Covers with central gilt monogram (“MB”), edges worn, joints splitting, corners bumped, and head/foot of spine chipped.

Description: Early Paris edition of Adolphe, the seminal psychological novel by Benjamin Constant (1767–1830), politician, thinker, and lover of Madame de Staël. First published anonymously in 1816, Adolphe shocked contemporary readers with its candid exploration of passion, dependency, and self-destruction within an illicit affair. This 1828 “quatrième édition,” printed during Constant’s lifetime, preserves the immediacy of its Romantic reception.

The binding, though worn, bears a gilt monogram (“MB”), suggesting ownership by a 19th-century French reader of means, perhaps a woman, as the gilt-tooled calf binding with decorative border was often used for presentation or gift copies. Its survival in this state speaks to the novel’s circulation among the salons of Restoration France, where Adolphe was discussed as both scandal and confession.

The work’s enduring importance lies in its unflinching dissection of love as both irresistible and ruinous — a theme that would deeply influence later writers from Flaubert to Gide. For collectors of French Romanticism, women’s literary culture, and works of psychological fiction, this early edition offers a direct link to the novel’s controversial first generation of readers.

Possessing such a volume elevates any library by anchoring it to the birth of the psychological novel and the turbulent intellectual world of post-Napoleonic Paris. A cornerstone text of French Romanticism, scarce in early editions and especially desirable when preserved in a period binding with personal provenance.

Condition: Fair to Good. Binding worn and cracked at joints, corners rubbed, losses at spine ends, gilt decoration still visible. Textblock sound, lightly foxed, pages generally clean and legible. Retains marbled endpapers and period ribbon marker.

Annotation: A scarce early Paris edition of Constant’s Adolphe, a landmark in psychological and Romantic literature, bound in contemporary calf with gilt monogram. Highly collectible for its influence and as a witness to the literary culture of post-Napoleonic France.

Item #178

Price: $250.00

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