HUGO (Victor) - Works. Romans. HAN d'HISLANDE I & II. Pa - Lot 133

HUGO (Victor) - Works. Romans. HAN d'HISLANDE I & II. Paris, Eugène Renduel, 1833. 2 vols. in-8, VI-414 pp. + VII-422 pp. in contemporary red half calf with corners, gilt fillets on covers, spine ribbed and decorated with gilt caissons and fillets (wear and slightly damaged jaws). Ex Libris PAUL MEURICE. Signed binding by V. CHAMPS. Fourth edition of Victor Hugo's text, the sixth novel in the Oeuvres de Victor Hugo published by Eugène Renduel. Written in his early youth, Victor Hugo was eighteen when he wrote his first version, and it appeared in 1820 in Le Conservateur littéraire, without an author's name. The first edition in volume was published in February 1823, still without an author's name, but with an error. So in April of that year, Hugo published a version in which he corrected the typos and reworked a few passages. It was in 1832 that Hugo and Renduel, his publisher, planned the present edition. It was published the following year, with its three prefaces dated May 1833, January 1823 for the first edition and April 1823 for the second. Provenance: Library of Paul MEURICE, then by direct descent. Eighteen-year-old Paul Meurice, who had been introduced to Hugo by his friend Auguste Vacquerie, was Hugo's frequent visitor. He had literary ideas and for several years tried his hand at a career as a playwright, staging several plays. In 1848, Hugo made him editor-in-chief of the newspaper L'Événement, which he had just founded, leading to his imprisonment in 1851. His relationship with Hugo was very close: the poet was best man at his friend's wedding to Palmyre Granger, daughter of the painter Jean-Pierre Granger. During Victor Hugo's twenty years in exile, Meurice was in charge of the outlawed writer's financial and literary interests. He also pursued his own literary career, publishing novels (some in collaboration with Alexandre Dumas, for whom he was a penman) and plays. He adapted Notre-Dame de Paris, Les Misérables and Quatre-vingt-treize for the stage. With Vacquerie and Victor Hugo's sons, Meurice founded the newspaper Le Rappel in 1869. When Victor Hugo died in 1885, Meurice and Vacquerie were appointed executors of his will. In this capacity, Meurice was responsible for arranging the poet's posthumous collections. In 1902, he founded the Maison de Victor Hugo in Paris (wikipedia).