MANUSCRIT. - State of the main books composing... - Lot 166 - Giquello

Lot 166
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800 - 1200 EUR
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Result : 1 170EUR
MANUSCRIT. - State of the main books composing... - Lot 166 - Giquello
MANUSCRIT. - State of the main books composing the library of C. Fontanes, of the engravings and manuscripts that he lost in Lyon in the fire of his house on rue Hélène on the 24th of August 1793. Small manuscript in-folio (320 x 200 mm) of 4 pages, bradel modern cardboard. Interesting handwritten inventory giving an idea of the library that belonged to Louis de Fontanes (1757-1821), poet, writer and politician, great friend of Châteaubriand, appointed by Napoleon as grand master of the Imperial University, just before its destruction by fire in 1793. The French civil war furiously interrupted [his] dream of literate leisure. The army of the Convention soon besieged, bombarded and decimated Lyon, guilty of Girondism. [Fontanes] escaped to Paris, where he had the time, in his hiding place, to write in one night, for the deputies of Lyon, the speech that the next day one of them read before the Convention, at first disconcerted by this picture of Terror, but soon taken back in hand by Collot d'Herbois, montagnard proconsul of the liberated Commune. Abandoning Paris after nearly being arrested, he found refuge in Sevran, near Livry, with his wife and daughter, born in Lyon under the bombs, at the home of his friend the poetess Mme Dufrénoy (Marc Fumaroli). The manuscript seems to have been written by Fontanes himself, drawing up an inventory of his library from memory: we read on the last page that there were two boxes of books in his house containing a large number of works of pleasant literature newly arrived from Paris, not yet unpacked, and which were burned with the rest.
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