Victor Hugo - Les Châtiments - 1870

HUGO, VICTOR. — LES CHÂTIMENTS (PARIS, HETZEL, 1870, FIRST COMPLETE EDITION PARTLY ORIGINAL). Paris: J. Hetzel [1870]. In-12. Red-brown half-leather, spine with raised bands ornamented with gold fillets. A historic edition of major importance in Victor Hugo’s bibliography. After seventeen years of censorship and clandestine circulation under the Second Empire (the princeps original edition having been printed clandestinely in Brussels in 1853), Les Châtiments finally appeared legally in France on the eve of the Sedan battle and the proclamation of the Third Republic in September 1870. Published by his friend and historic publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, this edition bears the note "Seule édition complète" on the title page. It constitutes the first authorized full edition on French soil, freed from the imperial censorship cuts and augmented with the poems from the end of exile revised by the author (which gives it bibliophilic status as the first complete edition partly original). A fine copy preserved in its period half-leather binding. The spine is well preserved despite some wear with clear gilding, minor wear at the headband, and light rubbing at the corners. Interior with the usual foxing on wartime 1870 papers, but the binding is perfectly solid and the text very legible. When Hetzel went to press this edition in September 1870, Victor Hugo had just returned heroically to Paris via the Nord station after nineteen years of exile on Guernsey. The book then flies off the shelves in tens of thousands of copies in a besieged capital. The note "Seule édition complète" inscribed on the title page is a true political statement: it proclaims the victory of freedom of expression regained over the weapons of Napoleon III."

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