Description

FIRST EDITION posthumously donated by the Swiss bibliophile Gustave Révilliod, complete with endpaper.

A Genevan well known to all lovers of rare and curious books [...], M. Gustave Révilliod, has just acquired a new title to the recognition of enlightened readers by the publication of the unpublished poems of Mme Desbordes-Valmore. He has gathered together and tied into a bouquet the last flowers that fell from that feverish, faltering hand; he has let us hear the last accents of that voice that love and pain had made eloquent and inspired. So it is a Genevan who has offered to France, which is often forgetful, this poetic legacy of a child of France; let him receive here the expression of our gratitude for this act of piety, and let part of this gratitude go to this noble city of Geneva, which has never let anything of France's treasures go to waste [...] (Revue des deux Mondes)

Widely distributed, this collection played a major role in the author's posterity, opening with his most famous lines:

" Women, I know, must not write
Yet I write
So that in my far-off heart you can read
Just like leaving."

A fine copy in its publisher's hardback.

Vicaire III, 198.