This is the central site for a long-term project to research, examine, and respond to the radical collective of writers, theorists, architects, and visual artists who operated in Paris between 1829 and 1835 under the names of the Jeunes France & the Bouzingo, and through them to build a critical understanding of French Romanticist subculture through the historical lens of a continuing politically vigilant Anglophone avant-garde.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Philothée O'Neddy's Personal Library!

Check this out and step inside the brain of the first-generation avant-garde: the catalog from the sale of Bouzingo co-founder Philothée O'Neddy's personal library after his death!
http://gallica.bnf.fr/…/bpt6k1240265s.r=bibliotheque%20de%2…
I found it while doing research for the forthcoming FULL-LENGTH Philothée O'Neddy anthology, the first ever to appear in English!
This bibliography probably includes only the books that were worth enough money in 1875 to be worth auctioning individually; books that were either too common or too obscure to be worth much money were most likely bundled into lots and sold to second-hand book dealers en masse.
Here is a longish list, in no particular order, or some of the most interesting things that I noticed out of the 70 pages of listings:
==> O'Neddy owned many books on mysticism & science, alchemy, astronomy, geomancy, cabala, occultism, many 16th & 17th century copies, including a 1695 Hermetic dictionary, and 1611 edition of Nostradamus' prophesies.

==> Books on the theory and history of iconography & hieroglyphics.

==> On linguistics: Latin, French, Greek; dictionaries of rhymes, onomatopoeia (ed. Nodier), and several treatises attacking the official dictionary of the Académie Français through the ages.

==> Several anthologies and studies of comparative religion, as well as those on Islam, and Confucianism.

==> Scores of books from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, especially those dealing with mysticism, heresy, church politics, chivalric romance, and history–his library of medieval history was particularly large.

==> Medieval songs (most in first publications from manuscript during 1830s-50s), complete works of the Medieval criminal-poet Villon, Lazarillo de Tormes, Cervantes, and Rabelais in Bibliophile Jacob's edition with Doré's illustrations.

==> Many books in Latin (especially Medieval books on theology, hermeticism and history).

==> Philosophy and political theory: Moore's 'Utopia', works by the reformer Erasmus, Enlightenment Philosophes Rousseau and Voltaire (complete works), the radical Jacobin revolutionary Saint-Just (a ton of his books, one with an Introduction by Nodier), the anarchist Proudhon, the syndicalist Socialist Louis Blanc, and many works of the Revolutionary Girondistes, and studies of the Reign of Terror, plus a 1658 tract from England advocating regicide.
==> Histoire de l'Assemblée contituante” by Bazard, the ex-Saint-Simonist and founder of Christian Socialism, followed by Bouzngo co-founder Jehan Du Seigneur.

==> Evadamiste Socialist-occultist Alphonse Esquiros' 1847 'Paris, ou les Sciences, les institutions et les moeurs au XIX siècle."

==> "Poésies socials des ouvriers" socialist poems by self-taught workers, edited by Olinde Rodrigues, coiner of the term 'avant-garde'. This is the same 1st édition as that held in the Revenant Archive.

==> Cross-dressing female Romanticist historian & novelist Daniel Stern's 1850 'Histoire de la Révolution de 1848'.

==> A ton of history by the Liberal Romanticist historian Michelet, and a great many histories of the French Revolution, and general French & Roman history.

==> Jules Claretie's biography of O'Neddy's friend Borel.

==> Barbey d'Aurevilly's important Dandyist manifesto, 'Du Dandyisme et de George Brummell,' in 1st edition.

==> Tons of Romanticist literature naturally, many in first edition, some limited editions. Tons by Hugo, Musset, Lamartine, Saint-Beuve, Balzac, Stendhal, and Barthélemy, and a lot of Madame de Staël, Auguste Barbier, Alfred de Vigny, Casimir-Delavigne, George Sand, and Charles Nodier, including his 'Sept chateaux de le Roi du Bohême,' containing some of the very first avant-garde visual poetry and phonetic poetry.

==> Foreign Romantics or Romanticist icons: Byron, Ossian, Herder, Shakespeare, Goethe.

==> Books with personal inscriptions from their authors:
---------------Petrus Borels' 1832 Rapsodies
---------------Borel's 1839 'Madame Putiphar'
---------------Bibliophile Jacob's 1830 'Les Deux Fous"
---------------Honoré de Balzac's 'Monographie de la presse parisien' with text-corrections in Balzac's hand
---------------Casimir Delavigne's 1836 'A Family in the Time of Luther'
---------------Louise Colet's 'Monument de Molière'
---------------Auguste Barthélemy's 1844 'L'Art de fumer, ou la Pipe et le Cigare'
---------------Aimé Martin's 1837 'Plan d'un bibliothèque universelle' (encloses letter)
---------------Ernest Legouvé's 1833 'Morts bizarres, poèmes dramatiques, suivis de poésies'
---------------Lesné's 1827 'Épître à Simier père sur l'exposition de 1823'
---------------O'Neddy's own copy of 'Feu et flame' enclosing letters by Chateaubriand, Béranger
---------------Victor Hugo's gift copy of 'Les Burgraves' enclosing 2 portraits of Hugo and two letters from him, clippings of Dondey's reviews of the play (for which he lost his job), & an unpublished article by O'Neddy on the Neo-Classicist riot at the play's pre-performance.

==> Two copies of 1st ed. Hernani: one 1st printing, & a second printing with inscription "Hierro" & a portrait added (details not given in bibliography).

==> Also 12 letters from Borel, one from Saint-Beuve, five from Bouchardy, & one from Hugo

==> Lots of literary history generally.

==> Various other interesting books that jumped out:
---------------Aloysius Bertrand, 'Gaspard de la nuit'
---------------Aimé Martin, 'Plan d'un bibliothèque universelle'
---------------A collection of Bosnian, Croatian & Herzegovinian poetry, edited by Romanticist historian & novelist Prosper Mérimée.

==> A ton of theatre, especially by Cornielle (one of the first writers attacked by the French Academy), the comedian Molière, and the libertine & fantasist Fontaine. Also lots of work by the libertine satirists Crebillon and Rétif de la Bretonne.

==> Complete works of Boilleau, the hero of Classicism!

==> A great many bibliographies, both by subject matter and catalogues of other bibliophiles' collections. The later include catalogs of the personal libraries of the Romanticist defrocked priest Lamennais, O'Neddy's mentor Nodier (3 different bibliographies!), the proto-Romantic writers Chénier and Aimé Martin, the Romanticist preservationist and editor Baron Taylor, Romanticist writers Saint-Beuve and Charles Maurice, most of whom O'Neddy knew personally.

==> Treatises on typography: Henrici Stephani Epistola (1569) & the influential Romanticist typographer Henri Fournier (1825).

==> A small library on copyright law

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