UNIQUE COPY PRINTED ON JAPANESE PAPER.

Edmond de Goncourt's copy with this autograph signed mailing :

"To my dear Master
Edmond de Goncourt
fondly
his devoted Gustave Toudouze."

In the lead, an autograph page from the manuscript of the novel1 sheet of 210 x 270 mm folded and mitred, with this note in the lower margin:

"to Edmond de Goncourt, This manuscript page from Ma Douce, October 18, 1891 Gustave Toudouze"

Like many of the works in the Goncourt library, it was bound by Pierson in full red percaline and bears this first guard autograph note signed in red ink :

"Single copy printed in Japan, containing a manuscript page of the novel, given to me by the publisher. Edmond de Goncourt".

As a student at Collège Sainte-Barbe from 1855 to 1869, Gustave Toudouze was a close associate of Gustave Flaubert, who encouraged his beginnings. He assiduously frequented the attic of Edmond de Goncourt, thus getting closer to Émile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Alexandre Dumas fils and especially Guy de Maupassant, who dedicated the news to him. Traveling (1883). A work by Gustave Toudouze was also part of the famous collection of Edmond de Goncourt's portrait books: Perished at sea!The portrait of the author was painted the same year by his brother Édouard and is now kept in the library of the Arsenal. Finally, he was also at the origin of the posthumous volume of Selected Pages of the Goncourt Brothers, published by Armand Colin in 1896, for which he wrote the introduction.