Poèmes - Les Illuminations - Une saison en enfer - Notice par Paul Verlaine.

COLLECTED EDITION WITH VERLAINE'S PREFACE

8vo (183 x 125mm). Vii, 151pp. Original printed wrappers, with glassine jacket, partially unopened (upper wrapper detached, text-block split, spine discoloured, minor browning to leaves).

Paris [Evreux, imprimerie de Charles Hérissey]: Léon Vanier, 1892.

Uncommon, first collected edition of Symbolist poet Rimbaud's two best-known works, Les Illuminations and Une Saison en Enfer, which were first published in 1886 and 1873 respectively. Some editions have 1892 on the cover and 1891 at the foot of the title page, rather than 1892 as here. The first work here, Les Illuminations is a collection of experimental poems in verse and prose with a preface by Paul Verlaine, taken from the first edition of 1886. Verlaine explains that the poems were written between 1873 and 1875, while travelling around Europe; the title 'Illuminations', used by Rimbaud as the working title, is English and refers to coloured plates. 'A seize ans,' Verlaine writes, 'il avait écrit les plus beaux vers du monde.'

The autobiographical Une Saison en Enfer, arguably Rimbaud's most famous collection, was written 'between April and August 1873, the turbulent period which saw his disastrous last stay in London with Verlaine, and their final separation after the incident in Brussels in which Verlaine shot and wounded Rimbaud' (Michaelides, 199). Printed in Brussels by the Alliance Typographique, Une Saison en Enfer was the only one of his works to be published by Rimbaud himself; that is, the nineteen-year-old poet persuaded his mother to pay for it. 

Leaves browned, good copy. 

Carteret Romantique II, 272. Vicaire VI, 1135. C. Michaelides, 'Stefan Zweig's copy of Rimbaud, Une Saison en Enfer (1873)', The British Library Journal, 14.2 (1988), 199-203. 

Stock Code: 228659