Edgar Poe, by Marie Bonaparte
A seminal psychoanalytical literary study: Marie Bonaparte’s essential work on Edgar Allan Poe
One of the large paper nominative copies on Arches, inscribed by the author
Marie Bonaparte. Edgar Poe. Etude psychanalytique. Ouvrage orné de vingt-sept illustrations. Avant-propos de Sigmund Freud.
Paris, Denoël et Steele, 1933.
First edition. 2 vols. (25.5 x 18 cm). Large 8°: xii-922 pp., continuously paginated. Original publisher’s pictorial wrappers with folding flaps, untrimmed and unopened, one of the rare nominative copies on Alfa paper. An immaculate copy in fine French condition.
The limitation calls for a first edition of only 15 large paper copies, 5 on vélin d'Arches and 10 on Alfa, this copy being a special copy on vélin d'Arches for Max Dorian, which is also inscribed by the author to Madame Louis Hermite.
First edition of this important psychoanalytic study of Edgar Allan Poe, with a foreword by Sigmund Freud and adorned with twenty-seven illustrations.
After Freud’s preface, this study includes a biographical, literary and bibliographical index, an index of Poe's works, a psychoanalytic index, and a robust bibliography.
Marie Bonaparte (1882-1962), was the great-grandniece of Emperor Napoleon I and the wife of Prince George of Greece and Denmark, and a leading pioneer of Freudian psychoanalysis. Her groundbreaking work on Edgar Allan Poe was regarded by contemporary critics as one of the best studies of the author extant (Edmond Jaloux, Les Nouvelles Littéraires, Sept. 23, 1933). As Sigmund Freud’s great protector and follower, Bonaparte’s work is valuable for her insights on Poe, and a monumental work that links literary analysis with psychoanalysis which predates the work of Jacques Lacan. Her role in rescuing Sigmund Freud from Nazi persecution cannot be overstated as she assisted him financially, politically, and logistically to leave Vienna for first Paris and then London.
The present copy bears all the features of which the bibliophile’s dreams are made: a fine, unopened copy in the original wrappers; a large paper copy on Arches paper, specially printed for the recipient Max Dorian (on whom more soon). But curiously, Dorian’s printed name appears in the limitation statement only in volume two (where a blank space stands in vol. 1), and the work is inscribed by the author on the half title of vol. 1 to Madame Louis Hermite, née Jeanne Ternaux Compans (1886-1961), the author of La vie d'un palais Danois. La légation de France à Copenhague (1933), a work Bonaparte mentions in her inscription. Madame Hermite, as she is addressed in the inscription, was the wife of Louis Hermite, who had been French Ambassador to Denmark in the late 1920s. Bonaparte must certainly have known the Hermite’s in Copenhagen during official visits with her husband, Prince George, who had resided at nearby Bernstorff Palace with his uncle, Prince Valdemar of Denmark.
Max Dorian, the nom de plume of Bernard Doreau (1901-1989), was a writer, editor, and press attaché for Editions Denoël et Steele, the publisher of Bonaparte’s Edgar Poe. Around the time that her study of Poe appeared, Doreau, under the penname Dorian, initiated under the Denoël and Steele imprint a literary review, Le Document, the first issue appeared Oct. 25, 1934.
How Dorian’s copy came to be inscribed by Bonaparte to Madame Hermite we leave to the curious scholar.
An exquisite copy.