Description

FIRST EDITION of this anthology by Ruskin.

SIGNED AUTOGRAPH ENVOI to Marcel Proust :

To the excellent translator of Sesame and the Amiens Bible
I send this insect work.
Robert de la Sizeranne

The work was the subject of a dispute between Proust and Robert de La Sizeranne, so when Proust approached Alfred Vallette about publishing his translation of The Amiens Biblethe director of the Mercure de France asked him instead to write a collection of Selected pages from Ruskin. Proust therefore had to produce such an anthology for Vallette to agree to publish first The Amiens Bible in 1904 and then Sesame and the Lilies in 1906. But when he learned of La Sizeranne's plan to publish an anthology with Hachette, Proust took the opportunity to break his promise in June 1906.
In 1917, he summed up the controversy as follows: "I had made a collection of these pages, but I destroyed it at the request, or rather at the behest - for this is more his way - of M. de La Sizeranne, who had himself made a collection of this kind, not yet published, and did not want to be outdone"..

The copy was bound in green half-chagrin, with Marcel Proust's initials at the foot, like many of the works in the library of the author of the Search for lost time.

ProvenanceMarie-Claude Mante Proust, great-niece of Marcel Proust.

References :
Consignment listed by P. Wise in A friendly library: books dedicated to Marcel Proust, 2017. Kolb, XXI, p. 610, note 4, Kolb, XXI, n° 454, 455, Kolb, XVI, n° 7.
J. Bastianelli, Proust-Ruskin dictionary, p. 530-532.
Exhibition : Marcel Proust and His Time, n° 365.