FLAUBERT (GUSTAVE)


Salammbô, FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed "à mon cher confrère d'outre-manche Hamilton Aidé, Gus. Flaubert" on the half-title, later green calf, spine fading, a few scuffmarks [Carteret I, p.266], 8vo, Paris, Michel Lévy Frères, 1863
|INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO HIS FELLOW NOVELIST AND FRIEND, CHARLES HAMILTON AIDÉ, "...mon cher confrère d'outre-manche". Described by his friend Henry James as "supreme dilettante", and by the literary critic John Sutherland as "super-sophisticated (and probably homosexual)" Aidé (1826-1906), "spoke and wrote French as easily as English, [and] devoted himself to society, music, art, and literature... His novels were simply written, under an obvious French influence. His frequent use of first-person female narrators led some early reviewers to believe that he was a woman" (ODNB). In 1862, the year before Flaubert presented him with this copy of Salammbô", Aidé's first novel, Rita, had been translated into French. Writing to his niece Caroline Hamard on 13 October 1862, Flaubert mentions that Hamilton Aidé had paid him a visit ("...Il est pour peu de jours à Paris. Il m'a semblé vielli et ratatiné", and in the same letter he reports that "Salammbô ne sera pas encore parue" (Correspondence, Vol. III, 1980, p.253). This is the first edition, first printing, with the faults "effraya" instead of "effraièrent" on p.5, and "Scissites" instead of "Syssites" on pages 251, 368, and 370.Provenance: Sold by a descendant of the poet Frederic Myers and his wife Eveleen (neé Tennant), both friends and correspondents of Hamilton Aidé. Eveleen's mother was Gertrude Collier (a cousin of Aidé) who, having first met Flaubert in 1842 continued to be friends with him until his death in 1880.