Description

FIRST EDITION.
One of the few deluxe copies on Hollande paper.
The one by Maxime du Camp includes this signed autograph letter:

"To my friend
Maxime du Camp
Laurent-Pichat

Friends and associates, along with other literary figures, resumed publication of the Revue de Paris, of which Laurent-Pichat became manager in 1857 and in which they published extracts from Madame Bovary.
Maxime du Camp gave him the manuscript of his childhood friend Gustave Flaubert. Together, they suggested some cuts so that it could be published safely in the Reviewbut to no avail. As head of the ReviewLaurent-Pichat was tried alongside the author and printer for offences against public and religious morality and decency. Eventually acquitted, the Revue de Paris and Gustave Flaubert ceased their collaboration, Flaubert refusing to modify his manuscript.

This work is a collection of speeches given the previous year at the Conférences de la rue de la Paix on poetry, its role and authors contemporary with the author. This discussion circle, which was banned the year the collection was published, illustrates the republican efforts of the time to combine literature, free public education and civic participation against the Empire. These speeches illustrate the political and militant vocation that Laurent-Pichat attributed to literature, and poetry in particular.

Nice provenance.
From the library of Maxime du Camp, with his number repeated on the spine and his engraved bookplate pasted on the flyleaf.