MATURIN (Charles-Robert). - Lot 199

MATURIN (Charles-Robert). Bertram, ou Le Château de Saint-Aldobrand, tragedy in five acts. Freely translated from English by MM. Taylor and Ch. Nodier. Paris, Gide fils, Ladvocat, 1821. In-8, cherry half-calf, spine decorated with gilt fillets and cold fleurons and fillets, speckled edges (period binding). First edition. Charles-Robert Maturin, novelist and playwright, vicar of St. Peter's Anglican Church in Dublin, was the last English representative of the "school of terror" initiated by Walpole, Radcliffe and Lewis. The translators, in their preface, speak of Bertram as a frightening drama, a worthy production of the morose and fierce genius, and add: "What is deplorable is that this English tragedy is horribly beautiful, and if one may so express it, that it is horribly moral; for one cannot complain that crime does not receive its punishment. This preface is one of the first manifestos of the Romantic genre. Extensive contemporary biographical note on the author, copied from a letter by Lord Byron, on the first flyleaf.