Description

ORIGINAL EDITION of the very first Dreyfusard pamphlet, printed in Belgium in 3500 copies. It was not published in Paris until 1897.

After moving to Paris in 1886, the journalist Bernard Lazare frequented literary bohemia and anarchist circles before becoming involved in the fight for social art. In 1894, he published Antisemitism, its history and causesand controversy with the director of Free speech, Édouard Drumont. Knowing his views, Captain Dreyfus's family contacted him at the start of the affair. Convinced that the accused was being framed, Bernard Lazare agreed to take up his defence.

However, he struggled to find support in Paris: although the text was completed in the autumn of 1895, the Parisian newspapers to which he contributed refused to publish it. In addition, the accused's family preferred to wait for a more "strategic" moment. Such an opportunity arose in 1896, when rumours of an escape were circulating and an article published in L'Éclair on 15 September 1896, asserted the existence of a secret document not subject to defence. Bernard Lazare left for Belgium, where he had 3,500 copies of the brochure (revised from the 1895 text) printed and sent out from Paris, Brussels and Basle. This expense led some to speculate that a trade union was involved.

"Overnightwrites Bernard Lazare, "I was an outcast".. Abraham Frumkin, an anarchist activist, recounts: ".He was not only the first: for three years, he was also the only one who had the courage to speak out in favour of the captain.". And his friend Charles Péguy added " [The Dreyfus affair hung over his shoulders like an inexpiable cloak. Suspect everywhere, solitary above all in his own party. Not one newspaper or review accepted or tolerated his signature". This did not prevent Lazare from canvassing the literary intelligentsia of the day, including Zola "whom I found full of sympathy, but whom grace did not strike [...] that when the full drama captures his imagination as a novelist". Lazare borrowed from Bernard Lazare the litany of "J'accuse" that ran through his article in L'Aurore: Lazare entrusted him with a letter to the Dreyfus family, dated 1895, in which he used this motif.

A second edition ofA miscarriage of justice, slightly expanded and corrected, was published in 1897 by Stock. The day after Dreyfus was condemned, Lazare published a new pamphlet, How an innocent man is condemned. He will compose for L'Aurore  several articles on Jewish communities in Europe and North Africa.

Uncommon.