Spectacular Simone de Beauvoir Archive $380,000-$470,000 At Christie's

by Stephen J. Gertz

An outstanding trove of over 350 original and unpublished signed autograph letters and postcards written by French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, social theorist, and author of the major work of Feminist theory, The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949; 1953 in English), Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), is being offered by Christie's-Paris in it Importants livres anciens,  livers d'artistes & manuscrits sale, April 30, 2014. It is estimated to sell for $380,000-$470,000 (€280,000-€350,000; £250,000-310,000).

Spanning the years 1918-1957, the letters, each 1-10 pages in length and written to her mother, Françoise de Beauvoir (1887-1963), constitute an informal book by de Beauvoir, discussing her childhood and adolescence, life as an independent teacher, her emancipation, etc., and in detail recounts her daily life, travels, her readings (Dumas, Dostoevsky, Saint- Exupery, Faulkner, Celine, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and many detective novels), meetings, and the progress of her literary work.

As the letters progress from youth to adulthood, discussion of her blood family ebbs and the tide flows to the "small family" she was adopted into, whose members, cited many times, included Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques-Laurent Bost, Olga Zuorro, Bianca Bienenfelds, Nathalie Sorokin Fernand, and Stephan Gerassi, and also Merleau-Ponty, Nizan,  Colette Aubry, the Morels, the Guilles, the Leiris, Raymond Aron,  etc.  

There is much discussion of Jean-Paul Sartre, whom she met in 1929, opening "a new era" in her life. Several letters detail her life with Sartre: a trip together to Spain in 1931; sojourns in Spain, Italy, Germany - where she joined Sartre  in an internship at the French Institute in Berlin in 1939 - in Greece (July-August 1937) and Morocco (summer 1938). She finds Nuremberg "covered with swastikas," and Morocco "horribly lousy, but extremely attractive." 

She discusses her June 1940 exodus from Paris - Sartre was taken prisoner and would not be released until April of the following year; Simone took refuge in La Poueze. She writes of taking a long bicycle trip with Sartre in the free zone to organize a resistance movement. "There is a dearth here," she wrote Sept. 13, 1940 from Cannes, "and twice I had a breakfast of dry bread." The Liberation and her immediate post-war life are covered.

She writes of her 1947 lecture tour in the United States, where she met novelist Nelson Algren, who took her for a walk on the wild side and became her lover. "New York absolutely delights me and life is delicious" (January 28, 1947). She talks about a trip to Sweden with Sartre, and another in the United States and Mexico with Algren in 1948, then Algeria  the following autumn, and with a ferocious appetite for life she describes her discoveries and impressions. Concurrently, she began The Second Sex: "J’ai envie de travailler le plus possible parce que ce livre sera très long à faire et je voudrais quand même bien qu’il soit fni dans un an," she writes in September 1948; the book would be published a year later. 

Additional Sartre, Algren, an important trip to China in 1955, and more through 1957 when the correspondence ends.

The provenance to the archive is rock-solid: from Henriette, Simone's sister, aka Helene de Beauvoir. Her adopted daughter, Mrs. Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, assisted Christie's with the dates to many  letters otherwise dateless.

The significance of this archive cannot be underestimated: it constitutes an epistolary autobiography of one of the towering figures in feminist thought and a major figure in twentieth century French literature.

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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Kierkegaard's Silver Quill At Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's silver quill, finely wrought as an elegant feather, is being offered by Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers of Copenhagen in its International Paintings, Antiquities and Modern Art sale on September 18, 2013. It is estimated to sell for €10,000-€13,000 ($13,295 - $17,282).

The quill, 16.3 cm long (just shy of 6 1/2 inches), has passed down through the Høyernielsen family, descendants of Kierkegaard's sister, Nicoline. According to family tradition, it is the only pen he is known to have meticulously and diligently used to set down his thoughts, which flooded out of his head, poured down his arm, ran into his fingers through to pen and burst onto paper.

In 1955, this pen was exhibited at the Royal Library's Memorial Exhibition on Kierkegaard, and it was also depicted in the exhibition's catalog.

Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the father of existentialism who considered himself a Christian poet, was a compulsive, profound and prolific writer with a chronic itch. In 1838, he wrote in his journal, "Ingen dag uden en streg" ("No day without a line"). Later, in 1847, he noted, "Only when I'm writing do I feel well. I forget all unpleasantness and sufferings, I am with my thoughts and happy. If I stop for only a few days I feel immediately sick, overwhelmed, labored, my head heavy and weighed down."

As a youth the prominent Danish literary and cultural critic, Georg Brandes (1842-1927), was witness to Kierkegaard's fervent urge to write. In his memoirs (1880) he recalled walking past Kierkegaard's apartment and catching sight of him through a window:

"The strange Thinker went back and forth during a silence that was only broken by pen scratching on paper [...] in all rooms lay pen, paper and ink [...] Never in all existence has ink played so great a role."

Note that the pen has no nib. By the 1830's, quill pens, which sucked up ink into their hollow via capillary action and required that the feather be often sliced at its point to maintain a sharp nib, had been replaced by dip pens with steel nibs (the pen itself) inserted into pen-holders, as here.  Steel nibs were sturdier, kept their sharpness, lasted longer, and had the added advantage of being a much neater implement, not spilling ink all over paper and fingers. The next step in the evolution of pens was the fountain pen. Had Kierkegaard lived long enough to enjoy their use, the fountain would have required the capacity of Niagara Falls to handle the rush of words that cascaded forth.

His pen in overdrive, Kierkegaard wrote seventy-three works during his lifetime, many under pseudonyms including Johannes Climacus, Nicolas Notabene, Vigilius Haufniensis, Frater Taciturnus, Johannes de Silentio, Constantin Constantius, Victor Eremita, and my personal favorite, Hilarius Bookbinder, who, I imagine, thinks that binding a book in infant-soiled publisher's diaper cloth glued with anti-bacterial zinc oxide paste and dusted with Johnson's Baby Powder is a laff-riot.

Philosophy being a notoriously low-paying gig, one wonders how Kierkegaard could afford such an  extravagant and expensive pen. He was, however, born into wealth and died in it, never held a job, and never, ever had to worry about paying bills, which tends to burn a lot of mental energy that Kierkegaard had the luxury to conserve for that other consuming preoccupation, the anxiety of existence.

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Images courtesy of Bruun Rasmussen auctions, with our thanks.
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The Story Of Nobody, By Somebody, Illustrated By Someone

By Stephen J. Gertz

The Original Story Of O.

Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit
(From Nothing Comes Nothing).

Since Nothing is with Nothing fraught
Then Nobody must spring from naught.

"Nobody knows the trouble I've seen..."

But Nobody's not talking so we have to depend upon Something Concerning Nobody (1814), a curious satire edited by Somebody, and delightfully illustrated by Someone, for answers. Nobody has nothing to worry about in this testament to his non-existence; Nobody, it turns out, lives. It's Being and Nothingness without the annoying phenomenological ontology, cut-to-the-chase existentialism. Nobody, it turns out, is somebody and nothing to sneeze at.

Nobody's afraid of him.

Somebody, Nobody's biographer,  begins with a Dedication to the object of his essay: "I...content myself with courting Nobody's applause, whose patronage I can at all times command, heedless of public approbation," signing it, "With all due deference, Sir, Your most obsequious And very humble servant, Somebody."

Nobody at the door.

It is Nobody's curse that he has no body,
simply head, arms and legs.

Somebody did his homework.  It's a difficult task to trace the lifetime of "the renowned Mr. Nobody, whose existence was not only anterior to Adam's wearing green incomprehensibles, but even before the sun, moon, or stars  moved in the realms of endless space." With this statement, Somebody moves from existential philosophy into modern theoretical physics and the mind-bending consideration of something out of nothing, somebody out of Nobody, and chaos theory.

Somebody consulted "The Chronicles of Chaos, a volume so vast and intricate that few heads can even think upon the subject without becoming moon-struck; or, to speak more comprehensively, bereft of their wits." The work of Doctor Dennis O'Dunderum, Doctor Brady O'Blunder'em, and the compendium of Doctor Wiggins Wig-all ("published in folio, Basel edition, vol. 192, page 1379, beginning at line 106") was also studied. 

A domestic scene: Nobody at home.

"Ever since we were urchins at school we recollect the mischief that Nobody did. We find, however, by Somebody, that Nobody is more amusing than we suspected; though we fear, if we inquire for Somebody, as the author of Something about Nobody - nobody will own it. This piece, 'a trifle light as air,' will amuse in spite of criticism - not as a literary bagatelle, but as a 'Picture Book.' Nobody perhaps will know so much of the letter-press part as ourselves; nor will any body believe that Nobody goes to Paternoster Row, nor that Nobody travels.

"'On his way from the city towards the west end of the metropolis, our Nobody, instead of passing along St. Paul's Curchyard, though for to be godly, and therefore proceeded by the way of Paternoster Row, the renowned mart of literature, in order to take a peep at the liberal GENTLEMEN booksellers of the present era.'

"Winners will be laughers whether booksellers or authors, for which Nobody will blame them; and if Somebody's book 'goes off' well, buyers will laugh at Nobody" (The Critical Review, or, Annals of Literature, 1814, Article 20, p. 218).

Somebody & Nobody

Who's responsible for this work of mind-warping whimsy? Who is the Somebody behind Nobody?

William Henry Ireland (1775 - 1835)  is the pseudonymous Somebody. He is known as a poet, writer of gothic novels, and histories. But his primary claim to fame is as the Thomas J. Wise of his time.

"Perhaps the most brazen literary forgeries of all were those of William Henry Ireland. William Henry Ireland was born in London in 1777, the son of Samuel Ireland, a self-taught artist who had achieved considerable commercial success with a series of illustrated travel books. Samuel Ireland also fancied himself an antiquarian. He collected books and artwork and had an enthusiasm for William Shakespeare which bordered on idolatry. His devotion was such that he read nightly to his family from the works of Shakespeare and sought memorabilia and artifacts relating to the Bard. During a research trip to Stratford, for what was later published as Picturesque Views on the Upper, or Warwickshire Avon (1795), Samuel Ireland is alleged to have been duped into purchasing such fraudulent artifacts as a purse and chair formerly belonging to Shakespeare. His son William accompanied him on this trip and was able to witness firsthand his father's passion and, perhaps gullibility, towards any and all things relating to Shakespeare.

"William Henry Ireland, like his father, was an avid reader and a collector of books and antiquities. His biographers suggest he was also familiar with James Macpherson's Ossian poems and with the life and work of Thomas Chatterton. At some point, the younger Ireland apparently decided to emulate these two figures in an effort to satisfy his father's desire to obtain a document in Shakespeare's handwriting...

"In December 1794, William Henry Ireland informed his father that he had discovered a cache of old documents in the possession of a wealthy acquaintance. Among them was a deed bearing the signature of William Shakespeare which he accepted as a gift from his friend on the condition that it remain anonymous. William in turn gave it to his father who was beside himself with joy at his son's discovery. William had satisfied his father's lifelong dream to possess an actual specimen of William Shakespeare's signature" (William Henry Ireland and the Shakespeare Fabrications, University of Delaware Special Collections).

Nobody scents it.

And what of the anonymous artist who has so keenly captured the essence of Nobody with nothing to go on? 

George Moutard Woodward (1760?-1809), “caricaturist, son of William Woodward of Stanton Hall, Derbyshire, was born in that county about 1760. He received no artistic training, but, having much original talent, came to London, with an allowance from his father, and became a prolific and popular designer of social caricatures, much in the style of Bunbury, which were etched chiefly by Rowlandson and Isaac Cruikshank. Although their humour was generally of a very coarse and extravagant kind, they display a singular wealth of imagination and insight into character, and some are extremely entertaining. Among the best are ‘Effects of Flattery,’ ‘Effects of Hope,’ ‘Club of Quidnuncs,’ ‘Everybody in Town,’ ‘Everybody out of Town,’ and ‘Specimens of Domestic Phrensy.’ Woodward…was of dissipated and intemperate habits, spending much of his time in taverns, and died in a state of penury at the Brown Bear public-house in Bow Street, Covent Garden, in November 1809” (Oxford DNB).

Nobody arrested in his Minority.A case of arrested development.

.

It is ironic that the man who forged Shakespeare would make much ado about Nobody. 

In the modern world, the subject of something about Nobody was revisited by one of America's  lesser known philosophers, from the Steubenville, Ohio, school of thought.



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[IRELAND, William Henry]. [WOODWARD, George Moutard, illustrator].  Something Concerning Nobody. Edited by Somebody. Embellished with Fourteen Characteristic Etchings. London: Printed for Robert Scholey, 1814.

First edition. Octavo (7 3/8 x 4 7/8 in; 188 x 125mm) . xv, 191 pp. Fourteen hand-colored engraved plates.

Regarding authorship, see British Museum N&Q, 4th ser., VII, 474.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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The Most Provocative, Revolutionary, Dangerous, Radical, and [insert adjective] Book Ever Written

by Stephen J. Gertz

Q1: What book, born of the political upheavals in mid-nineteenth century Europe,  spearheaded radical Leftist Anarchism in the United States during the late-nineteenth through early decades of the twentieth century and then, intellectually banished for a few decades, returned in the mid-twentieth century from exile  to rise, by the end of  the late-twentieth century, as the philosophical cornerstone of a Conservative wing of the Republican party?

Q2: Do Libertarians in the U.S. understand that the roots of their philosophy lie in Anarchism?  Does their leadership?

Q3: If so, why haven't their brains blown a fuse?

A1. Der Einzige und sein Eigentum by Max Stirner (b. Johann Kaspar Schmidt, 1806-1856), originally published in Leipzig, 1845 [1844, post-dating a dodge to confuse Prussian censors], translated into English and published in New York in 1907 as The Ego and His Own,  and reprinted, amongst other subsequent editions, in 1963 by the Libertarian Book Club.

A2. Probably not. If the leadership does, they're not talking; why scare the bejesus out of the current Libertarian constituency, which, if truth be known, would run for their lives?

A3. The answer, my friend, is explodin' in the wind.

STIRNER, Max (pseud. of Johann  Kaspar Schmidt, 1806-1856)). Der Einzige und sein Eigentum. Leipzig: Otto Wigand, 1845 [1844].

"Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them?...God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but themselves...Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think the 'good cause' must be my concern? What's good, what's bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me...The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is - unique, as I am unique.

      "Nothing is more to me than myself!"

-Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own

The Ego and His Own presents the case for the individual against authority. It was forged in Europe during a time of roiling political change. Monarchy and the theocratic state were going down, Liberalism was on the rise. The monarchal “the State is me,” had lost its legitimacy; “The State is us,” its citizens, was the rallying cry. A strong sense of Nationalism was in the air. The modern secular state was beginning to emerge.

Stirner would have none of it. He saw no point in replacing one form of government with another. The Ego and His Own is the premier work of anti-Statism and Stirner's  anti-Statism is ecumenical in breadth. The State was the grand enemy and would always be tyrannical, no matter its political philosophy, what form it took, or how good its intentions. All governments presume sovereignty over the individual and are therefore an evil; that is the nature of things when individuals subsume their egos to the power of an Other and unite as a crowd. 

Stirner’s anti-Statism was only the beginning. He was vehemently against any sort of authority over the individual whatsoever. God, morality, family, country, theology, philosophy, ideology - there is no aspect of authority, none at all, that Stirner accepts. One’s conscience? The sum of all fears of authority. Though he admires Jesus Christ as an anti-Statist revolutionary, he is particularly harsh in regard to organized Christianity and other organized religions. Anarchism - in a truly, purely  free society every man is a law unto himself - was the message.

This was his appeal to the far-Left of the late nineteenth / early twentieth century who saw liberty threatened by the modern State and took individual action, sometimes violent, against it.

In America, the message of radical individualism found its voice in Benjamin R. Tucker’s Leftist magazine, Liberty, which, from 1881 through 1908, was the seminal publication to spread the cause of individual freedom. It was and remains the foundational publication of Libertarianism  and individual protest in the English-speaking world.

James L. Walker (1845 - 1904), a Texas newspaperman and, later, doctor, was the first American to think about Stirner’s radical anti-authoritarianism at length and depth. Texans, proud to this day that they were once an independent nation, are particularly keen on matters of individualism and freedom, and Walker was a frequent contributor to Liberty. Through his influence Stirner was translated into English and the book published, with an introduction by Walker written before his death, by Tucker (1854 - 1939) in 1907. "Fifty years sooner or later can make little difference in the case of a book so revolutionary as this," he wrote. The bible of zealous anti-authoritarian individualism was now available to American readers, the Anarchist’s New Testament available for study, and, for the true believer, a clarion call to individual struggle against the State was heard.

First U.K. edition in English, 1912.

 "...the most revolutionary book ever written...[Stirner] has left behind him a virtual breviary of destruction, a striking and dangerous book...it is dangerous in every sense of the word..." (James Huneker, Egoists: A Book of Supermen. Stendahl, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Barré, Nietzsche, Blake, Ibsen, Stirner, and Ernest Hello. NY: Scribner's, 1909).

The book’s association with domestic terrorism pushed it to the fringe and it became a forgotten relic of  a time in American history that all wished to forget. After World War II,  however, it was rediscovered by a segment of the American Right. Libertarianism, once the enemy of order and all that the average American citizen held sacred, was now the True Path. How could this possibly happen?

In the post-WWII era, the Right was in full-fear mode, Communism's  invasion of  Eastern Europe and Asia too much to bear.  Socialism, Communism's second cousin, had made inroads into Western Europe. Marx was on the march. What was the philosophical counter to these developments? What was the intellectual hammer? Where was rugged individualism when it was needed most?

With  fierce, remorseless passion The Ego and His Own provides an answer, countering Communism's radical beatification of the collective over the individual with the radical beatification of the individual above all else.

Stirner's scorn for  Liberalism, with its insistence upon the basic equality of Man, is overt and palpable. Liberals, he accuses, sacrifice the actual individual to an abstraction of individuality. "The Christian takes hold of my spirit, the liberal of my humanity," he says.

The Ego and His Own remains the strongest philosophical argument against Socialism and Communism ever written; Stirner predicted that a Communist state would be more oppressive than any other yet seen in history. The fact that Sirner's contemporary, Karl Marx, despised  The Ego and His Own (a manically  enthusiastic  Hegelian tract one imagines Stirner madly scribbling away at, the Marquis de Sade busy doing same in the cell next door) surely sealed the deal.  The enemy of my  enemy is my friend.

Be careful how you choose your friends.

Libertarianism, once the  territory of Leftist revolutionaries, was now adopted by the far-Right as an intellectual bulwark against the spread of Communism. Its deification of the individual had natural appeal.
  
But Anarchists and latter-day Libertarians both got it wrong.

It was never Stirner’s intent for The Ego and His Own to be translated into a formal political philosophy leading to political action. That would constitute a movement and movements impress their own authority over their adherents. Politics is just another lever for authority to assert itself over individual will.

The Ego and His Own is about self-liberation, a revolution of the mind. Stirner is demanding of us. To be truly free man must be ruthlessly, relentlessly, and brutally honest with himself to expunge all traces of authority from without that dwell within, imposing their will against the individual. Strip it away; it is interfering with the  free and full expression of your sovereign self. Slavery to ideas was as pernicious as physical bondage.  Nothing exists or is more important than the individual.

It should really come as no surprise, then, that this book has been, over time, embraced by both the far-Left and far-Right. The political extremes are in constant search for  a new Eden, idealists from Never-Never Land on a mission seeking a Peter Pan-Pied Piper to lead them to a new, bountiful paradise.

Stirner would laugh out loud, pitilessly; they have enslaved themselves to an idea - Freedom! - sacrificed their ego to it and not, as Stirner argues, the other way around.

Stirner would mock, despise, and disown Libertarianism’s bastard step-child, Ayn Rand. She got the radical individualism right but fell off a cliff worshiping Capitalism - all -isms are authoritarian -  and allowing  a cult to develop around her subject to her iron authority. She was an apostate, just another power subjugating  followers to her will. On the plus side, however, she defends and celebrates, in The Fountainhead, the action of her protagonist when he blows up a building he designed in violent protest against its owner. But was he motivated by anti-government, anti-authoritarian sentiment? Not quite. The owner made design changes. His ego offended, Howard Rourke whined with TNT tears and Rand called it artistic integrity against collective bad taste. A strong case can be made for upholding artistic integrity but this is not it. On the down side, the building's  entrepreneurial capitalist owner got the shaft. Her philosophy is thus a muddle, praising one individual's will to power while damning another's, one who represents the  economic system she so admires that rewards individual vision and risk. Rand looks good until you look close; the inner contradictions are stark. Stirner, as rigorous a logician as you'll ever encounter, would dismiss her out of hand, amateur hour during the philosophy talent show. Rand denied her philosophy's Libertarian roots, as she tried to remake herself from Russian immigrant Jewess (thus with Leftist Anarchism in her blood) to femme-fatale atheist Conservative intellectual.

The libertarian movement has splintered. How could it not have? A truly  unified movement is antithetical to  individualism. Autonomy of the self takes a hit; at some point authority must be asserted. The post-Modern Libertarian Party was born in 1971. It has since grown to become the third largest and fastest growing political party in the United States. Many of its platform planks and core principles are right out of Stirner. How could they not be? He wrote the book.  

In his Introduction to the 1963 edition published by the Libertarian Book Club, Libertarian historian James J. Martin wrote  as much a warning as a welcome. “It may very well be that the largest number of mid-twentieth century individualists does not have the stamina to stick with Stirner to the bitter logical end. The various libertarians are free to decamp at that point of the journey beyond where they no longer care to proceed. But it is their responsibility to know whence individualism stems and where its logic goes.”

The proximal object lesson to glean from the contemporary American scene may be that the Post-WWII generations have more in common than not. We may have two political wings but  inordinate celebration of the individual self is not confined to either; it has become a cultural norm  that suggests  insecurity beneath exaggerated self-assertion, and not for irrational reasons.  We can feel individual liberties slowly, inexorably slipping away  as corporate interests march closer and closer to perfect, target marketing to an abstract individual with concrete buying habits, and we have become compelled to sell ourselves in the marketplace;  the individual as unique commodity,  come an' get it. But when rugged individualism becomes rabid individualism all of us suffer. We have responsibilities to each other as well as to ourselves. It’s called civilized society.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." (John Donne, Meditation XVII, 1624).
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The Most Celebrated and Influential Book on the Occult

by Stephen J. Gertz

First (and only) English translation.

"In the last half of 1509 and the first months of 1510, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, known in his day as the Magician, gathered together all the Mystic lore he had obtained by the energy and ardour of youth and compiled it into [an early draft of] the elaborate system of Magic, in three books, known as Occult Philosophy…The only English translation appeared in London in 1651" (Willis F. Whitehead, Preface to 1971 reprint).

“Recent historical investigation…assigns Agrippa a central place in the history of ideas of the Middle Ages. He is seen as characterizing the main line of intellectual development from Nicholas of Cusa to Sebastian Franck. Modern opinion evaluates him on the basis of his Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic influences – primarily in the De occulta philosophia” (DSB).

“De occulta philosophia  is a defense of magic, by means of which men may come to knowledge of nature and God, and contains Agrippa’s idea of the universe with its three worlds or spheres [Elementary, Celestial, and Intellectual]’ (Britannica).

 

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535).

 

Agrippa’s influence “added impetus to Renaissance study of magic and injected his name into early Faust legends. In [De occulta philosophia] he explained the world in terms of cabalistic analyses of Hebrew letters and Pythagorean numerology and acclaimed magic as the best means to know God and nature” (New Britannica).

First appearing in Latin in 1533, the book was translated into English by John French in 1651.
 

"John French (c.1616–1657), physician, was born at Broughton, near Banbury, Oxfordshire... In an era in which conventional approaches to the study and practice of medicine were under considerable attack, French seems to have aligned himself firmly with the cause of reform. In particular, he was a keen advocate of the chemical methods pioneered by Paracelsus and Van Helmont, whose ideas, and those of their followers, he attempted to popularize in the 1650s through original works and translations. [He] was well respected by many, including Robert Boyle, for his expertise in the practical side of chemistry and mineralogy" (Oxford DNB).

 

French's translation of Agrippa was, and remains since its original publication,  a strong influence on the study of magic in the English-speaking world.

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AGRIPPA, Henry Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy, written by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, Counseller to Charles the Fifth, emperor of Germany: and Judge of the Prerogative Court. Translated out of the Latin into the English Tongue by J. F. London: Printed by R.W. for Gregory Moule…, 1651.

First edition in English of Agrippa’s masterwork on the occult, originally published in Latin in 1533. Octavo. [2, blank], [1, blank], [1, frontispiece], [1, encomium], [1, blank], [24], 583, [1, blank], [12, Index] pp. Engraved frontispiece portrait, seven text woodcut illustrations, numerous occult symbols, and a folding table of alchemical symbology. Woodcut initials and headpieces.

Wing A789. Osler 1747. Lowndes 21. Graesse I, 45.
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Title page image courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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The Best of All Possible Candides

Seventeen editions issued in the same year: Who's the first, what's  the second, I don't know's the third?

by Stephen J. Gertz

True first edition [Geneva: Cramer], 1759.

In 1759 a novel was published that by the end of that year had seen sixteen other editions in French issued. Eight of that total of seventeen French editions were issued with title pages lacking location, publisher, or true author. Of those eight, four collated to 299 pages. Of those four, which is the true first edition?

The novel was Candide, Voltaire's masterpiece of philosophical satire, puncturing Leibnitz's lamely optimistic dicta that ours is "the best of all possible worlds" so deeply as to give Leibnez the fits, and skewering the Church with such outrageous dialogue as, "let us eat a Jesuit." Government was lampooned, as well.

As a result, the book was condemned on March 2, 1759 by the Grand Council of Geneva. The administration of Paris banned it as well. Both ordered the book's destruction.

Perhaps understanding that the novel would cause an uproar, Voltaire used a pseudonym - not that anyone was fooled. To make sure the book would be seen, he had the book simultaneously published in five European nations no later than January 15, 1759. The four editions containing 299 pages possess identical title pages. Untying the gordian bibliographical knot has been an exasperatingly complex chore but it has been done.

The 1759 edition printed by Cramer in Geneva containing 299-pages has been firmly identified as the true first edition with the following issue points: misprint "que ce ce fut" on p. 103, line 4 (corrected in later editions to "que ce fut"); incorrect adjective "precisement" on p. 125, line 4 (corrected in later editions to "precipitamment");  Voltaire's revisions on p. 31,  an unnecessary paragraph break eliminated; and p. 41,  several short sentences regarding the Lisbon earthquake  rewritten; does not contain the paragraph critical of contemporary German poets, which Voltaire decided to omit while the book was being printed.

Curiously, though this is the first printed edition from early January 1759, produced with Voltaire's direct involvement, it was not the first edition offered for sale: it was held back by Voltaire until February 1759.

Only ten copies of the Cramer edition have survived.

"Candide, and his equally guileless if more worldly-wise mentor, Dr. Pangloss, and their delicious adventures, still command our attention. The folly of philosophic and religious optimism is displayed with a vigour and wit that carries the reader away. Irony without exaggeration, a perfect restraint in its admirable humour, a gift for the 'throw-away line' ...; all these show Voltaire's style and originality at their incomparable best" (Printing and the Mind of Man).

It may be fairly said that Voltaire did to optimism what Sade, later in the eighteenth century, did  to virtue; the novel could easily have been subtitled, The Misfortunes of Optimism; Candide, like Sade's Justine, is brutally savaged by reality. The book's sharp sarcasm, mordant wit, and pungent irony is mirrored in the traditional Jewish interpretation of optimism: "Today will be better than yesterday and definitely better than tomorrow."

"Il existe de Candide huit editions differentes, publiées en 1759 sans nom de ville ni d'imprimeur, toutes tirées dans le même format, et ayant toutes un titre identique. De ces huit editions, celle-ci est la première" (Bengesco, B.N.F., En Français dans le texte).

Be that as it may, to definitively sort out the issue, we  consulted the esteemed and illustrious bibliographers, William Abbott and Louis Costello, who hereby present their findings:

That clears it up.
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[VOLTAIRE, François Marie Arouet]. Candide ou L'optimisme. Traduit de l'allemand de Mr. le docteur Ralph. N.p. [Geneva]: n.p. [Cramer], 1759. Twelvemo. [2, blank], 299 pp. With points as noted above.

Barber 299G. Bengesco 1434. Morize 59a. Wade 1.  PMM 204.
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Title page image courtesy of Camille Sourget Livres Anciens, with our thanks.
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