Henry James: The Legend of the Master

Simon Nowell-Smith: The Legend of the Master (1947)


At the Grave of Henry James

The snow, less intransigeant than their marble,
Has left the defence of whiteness to these tombs;
For all the pools at my feet
Accommodate blue, now, and echo such clouds as occur
To the sky, and whatever bird or mourner the passing
Moment remarks they repeat.

"A great and talkative man," W. H. Auden called him in this magnificent elegy, first published in Horizon in 1941. I too - to descend from the sublime to the ridiculous - have already written a short post on Henry James, some years ago, but solely in connection with his prowess as a writer of ghost stories.

His importance to Auden appears to have been as a kind of final court of literary appeal:

All will be judged. Master of nuance and scruple,
Pray for me and for all writers living or dead;
Because there are many whose works
Are in better taste than their lives, because there is no end
To the vanity of our calling: make intercession
For the treason of all clerks.

Others, too (Graham Greene among them), found his example strangely inspiring in the 1940s, as the brute beasts trampled the earth, and utter darkness threatened to swallow up the exquisite niceties of perception for which James stood for, both as man and writer.

Do I find him easy to read? Not really, no - with the exception of such fine early works as "Daisy Miller" or The American. I've never undertaken the task of reading a James novel without a certain trepidation. And there are still great gaps in my knowledge of his œuvre.

Paradoxically, though, I find him very easy to read about. I've worked my way through Leon Edel's magisterial, multi-volumed biography a couple of times now, and find it, alas, more enthralling than any of the Master's own books.

Of course it's only one among many biographies. And - just to make things simpler - it exists in a number of diverse forms. There's the original, five-volume edition, in which it first appeared between 1953 and 1972:

Leon Edel: Henry James (1978)

1. Edel, Leon. Henry James. The Untried Years: 1843-1870. 1953. New York: Avon Books, 1978.


2. Edel, Leon. Henry James. The Conquest of London: 1870-1881. 1962. New York: Avon Books, 1978.


3. Edel, Leon. Henry James. The Middle Years: 1882-1895. 1962. New York: Avon Books, 1978.


4. Edel, Leon. Henry James. The Treacherous Years: 1895-1901. 1969. New York: Avon Books, 1978.


5. Edel, Leon. Henry James. The Master: 1901-1916. 1972. New York: Avon Books, 1978.

Then there's the unabridged, but slightly reorganised British paperback edition:

Leon Edel: The Life of Henry James (1977)

1. Edel, Leon. The Life of Henry James. Vol. 1: 1843-89. 1953, 1962, 1963. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.


2. Edel, Leon. The Life of Henry James. Vol. 2. 1963, 1969, 1972. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.

And then, finally, there's the one-volume abridgement of 1985, which unfortunately contains some extra material, and therefore needs to be acquired by the fastidious collector (though it turned out to consist mostly of some rather tenuous speculations about some possible new sources for "The Turn of the Screw"):

Leon Edel: Henry James: A Life (1978)

1. Edel, Leon. Henry James: A Life. 1953, 1962, 1963, 1969, 1972 & 1977. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1985.

That really is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Jamesiana, though. There's the disreputably entertaining work by Simon Nowell-Smith pictured at the head of this post. And, if it's the Master's domestic arrangements that preoccupy you, there's the almost equally interesting work below by H. Montgomery Hyde:

H. Montgomery Hyde: Henry James at Home (1978)

1. Nowell-Smith, Simon. The Legend of the Master: Henry James as Others Saw Him. 1947. Oxford Paperbacks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.


2. Hyde, H. Montgomery. Henry James at Home. London: Methuen, 1969.

Then there are the curious events of the so-called 'Year of Henry James' - 2004 - when a whole series of novelists seem to have decided simultaneously to make him the star of their books. David Lodge and Colm Tóibín are the most prominent among them, but Lodge lists a number of others in his book of essays on the subject:

David Lodge: Author, Author (2004)

1. Lodge, David. Author, Author: A Novel. Secker & Warburg. London: Random House, 2004.


2. Lodge, David. The Year of Henry James or, Timing is All: The Story of a Novel. With Other Essays on the Genesis, Composition and Reception of Literary Fiction. Harvill Secker. London: Random House, 2006.


3. Tóibín, Colm. The Master: A Novel. Scribner. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

Colm Tóibín: The Master (2004)

What other ways are there to fritter away your time in the beguiling province of Henry-Jamesia without venturing to scale the daunting mountain ranges of his late prose? I can think of a few answers.

First of all, there are a number of other books by Leon Edel to sample - not to mention an intriguing book on 'The Turn of the Screw' by Auckland University lecturer Dr Elizabeth Sheppard. But the real motherlode lies in the books by and about the rest of the family: not just his polymathic elder brother William, but also his fiercely intelligent 'professional invalid' of a sister, Alice:

Leon Edel, ed.: The Diary of Alice James (1964)

1. Edel, Leon. The Psychological Novel, 1900-1950. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1955.


2. Edel, Leon. Bloomsbury: A House of Lions. 1979. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.


3. Edel, Leon, ed. The Diary of Alice James. 1964. Introduction by Linda Simon. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999.


4. Hardwick, Elizabeth, ed. The Selected Letters of William James. The Great Letters Series. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961.


5. James, William. The Principles of Psychology. Great Books of the Western World, 53. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher / Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.


6. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. 1901-2. Introduction by Arthur Darby Nock. 1955. The Fontana Library: Theology & Philosophy. London: Collins, 1968.


7. Lewis, R. W. B. The Jameses: A Family Narrative. 1991. An Anchor Book. New York: Doubleday, 1993.


8. Sheppard, E. A. Henry James and The Turn of the Screw. Auckland: Auckland University Press / Oxford University Press, 1974.


9. Yeazell, Ruth Bernard, ed. The Death and Letters of Alice James. 1981. Boston: Exact Change Books, 1997.

Sooner or later, of course, you'll have to bite the bullet and just start reading The Portrait of a Lady, or some other reasonably approachable early or mid-period novel, but even that can be put off for some considerable time if you choose to go via the distinctly less daunting letters-and-notebooks route:

Lyall H. Powers, ed.: Henry James and Edith Wharton (1990)

1. Matthiessen, F. O., & Kenneth B. Murdock, ed. The Notebooks of Henry James. 1947. A Galaxy Book GB 61. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1961.


2. Edel, Leon, ed. The Selected Letters of Henry James. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1955.


3. James, Henry. Letters I: 1843-1875. Ed. Leon Edel. London: Macmillan London Limited, 1974.


4. James, Henry. Letters II: 1875-1883. Ed. Leon Edel. 1975. London: Macmillan London Limited, 1978.


5. James, Henry. Letters III: 1883-1895. Ed. Leon Edel. 1980. London: Macmillan London Limited, 1981.


6. James, Henry. Letters IV: 1895-1916. Ed. Leon Edel. The Belknap Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: Harvard University Press, 1984.


7. James, Henry. Selected Letters. Ed. Leon Edel. The Belknap Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: Harvard University Press, 1987.


8. Edel, Leon, & Lyall H. Powers, ed. The Complete Notebooks of Henry James. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1987.


9. Horne, Philip, ed. Henry James: A Life in Letters. Viking Penguin. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999.


10. Powers, Lyall H, ed. Henry James and Edith Wharton. Letters: 1900-1915. London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Limited, 1990.


11. Smith, Janet Adam, ed. Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson: A Record of Friendship and Criticism. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1948.

Once again (as usual), it's Leon Edel who leads the charge, with his four-volume edition of the Letters, as well as a couple of one-volume selected editions. But, as you can see from the list above, there are also number of correspondences with particular friends and fellow authors to be savoured - not to mention one of those 'Life in Letters' compilations which offer such a good way of selling essentially the same material twice.

All of which brings me to what is (ostensibly, at least) the actual subject of this post: the decision to complete my set of the Henry James volumes included in the Library of America. If you've read my recent piece on the subject, you'll know more than enough already about my obsession with this black-backed series of classics.

Their Henry James collection includes the complete novels (in six volumes), the complete stories (in five volumes), the collected travel writings (in two volumes), the collected literary criticism (in two volumes), and the complete autobiographical writings (in one volume): 16 volumes in all. When I receive the last couple of volumes of novels, I'll be proud to say that I have them all:

Henry James

1. James, Henry. Novels 1871-1880: Watch and Ward / Roderick Hudson / The American / The Europeans / Confidence. Ed. William T. Stafford. The Library of America, 13. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1983.


2. James, Henry. Novels 1881-1886: Washington Square / The Portrait of a Lady / The Bostonians. Ed. William T. Stafford. The Library of America, 29. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1985.


3. James, Henry. Novels 1886-1890: The Princess Casamassima / The Reverberator / The Tragic Muse. Ed. Daniel Mark Fogel. The Library of America, 43. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1989.


4. James, Henry. Novels 1896-1899: The Other House / The Spoils of Poynton / What Maisie Knew / The Awkward Age. Ed. Myra Jehlen. The Library of America, 139. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2003.


5. James, Henry. Novels 1901-1902: The Sacred Fount / The Wings of the Dove. Ed. Leo Bersani. The Library of America, 162. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2006.


6. James, Henry. Novels 1903-1911: The Ambassadors / The Golden Bowl / The Outcry / Appendix: “The Married Son.” Ed. Ross Posnock. The Library of America, 215. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2011.


7. James, Henry. Complete Stories, Volume 1: 1864-1874. Ed. Jean Strouse. The Library of America, 111. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1999.


8. James, Henry. Complete Stories, Volume 2: 1874-1884. Ed. William L. Vance. The Library of America, 106. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1999.


9. James, Henry. Complete Stories, Volume 3: 1884-1891. Ed. Edward Said. The Library of America, 107. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1999.


10. James, Henry. Complete Stories, Volume 4: 1892-1898. Ed. David Bromwich and John Hollander. The Library of America, 82. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996.


11. James, Henry. Complete Stories, Volume 5: 1898-1910. Ed. Denis Donoghue. The Library of America, 83. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1996.


12. James, Henry. Collected Travel Writings. Great Britain and America: English Hours; the American Scene; Other Travels. Ed. Richard Howard. The Library of America, 64. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1993.


13. James, Henry. Collected Travel Writings. The Continent: A Little Tour in France; Italian Hours; Other Travels. Ed. Richard Howard. The Library of America, 65. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1993.


14. James, Henry. Literary Criticism: Essays on Literature; American Writers; English Writers. Ed. Leon Edel & Mark Wilson. The Library of America, 22. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.


15. James, Henry. Literary Criticism: French Writers; Other European Writers; The Prefaces to the New York Edition. Ed. Leon Edel & Mark Wilson. The Library of America, 23. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984.


16. James, Henry. Autobiographies: A Small Boy and Others / Notes of a Son and Brother / The Middle Years / Other Writings. 1913, 1914, 1917. Ed. Philip Horne. The Library of America, 274. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2016.

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Henry James: Autobiographies LOA N°274

Henry James: Novels 1903-1911 LOA N°215

Henry James: Novels 1901–1902 LOA N°162

Henry James: Novels 1896–1899 LOA N°139

 

Henry James: Complete Stories 1864–1874 LOA N°111

Henry James: Complete Stories 1884–1891 LOA N°107

Henry James: Complete Stories 1874–1884 LOA N°106

Henry James: Complete Stories 1898–1910 LOA N°83

Henry James: Complete Stories 1892–1898 LOA N°82

Henry James: Collected Travel Writings: The Continent LOA N°65

Henry James: Collected Travel Writings: Great Britain and America LOA N°64

Henry James: Novels 1886–1890 LOA N°43

Henry James: Novels 1881–1886 LOA N°29

Henry James: Literary Criticism: French Writers, Other European Writers, Prefaces to the New York Edition LOA N°23

Henry James: Literary Criticism: Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers LOA N°22 

 

  

Henry James: Novels 1871–1880 LOA N°13

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James (according to Leon Edel, at any rate) had an obsession with collected editions. His aspiration, from the very beginning, was to create a kind of American Comédie humaine in the spirit of Balzac's monumentally comprehensive portrait of nineteenth-century France. The set of Balzac he himself read was in 23 volumes. Hence the 23 volumes he attempted to compress his works into for the late New York edition (1907-9) of his works.

Unfortunately it sprawled into 24 volumes instead, and eventually included two posthumous volumes as well, so it's safe to say that his long-meditated enterprise didn't go quite as planned.

What's more, it was a financial disaster. He'd rewritten, revised, and radically pruned his early fiction to fit the aesthetic dictates of his late style, and the result was hardly pleasing to fans of the works in their earlier form. The elaborate prefaces he wrote for each volume, though subsequently collected as a kind of treatise on the art of fiction, were also seen as somewhat excessive.

This - as he perceived it - ruin of his life's work drove him into a depression, and it wasn't really until the pressure of war work in 1914 awoke him from lethargy that he was able to recover the will to live, let alone to write.

When he died in 1916, he accordingly left an immense but disordered legacy. Above all, there's the problem of which texts to read: the original versions or the revised ones? Leon Edel, by and large, preferred the novels and stories as they first appeared, and he attempted to restore them to popular attention in the many, many collections of James's works he edited or oversaw.

The most prominent of these was probably his 12-volume set of the Master's complete short stories:

Leon Edel, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James (1962-64)

1. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. Volume 1: 1864-1868. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962.


2. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. Volume 2: 1868-1872. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962.


3. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. Volume 3: 1873-1875. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962.


4. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. Volume 4: 1876-1882. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962.


5. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. Volume 5: 1883-1884. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963.


6. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. Volume 6: 1884-1888. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963.


7. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. Volume 7: 1888-1891. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963.


8. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. Volume 8: 1891-1892. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963.


9. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. Volume 9: 1892-1898. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1964.


10. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. Volume 10: 1898-1899. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1964.


11. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. Volume 11: 1900-1903. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1964.


12. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James. Volume 12: 1903-1910. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1964.

Leon Edel, ed. The Complete Tales of Henry James (Vol 10: 1898-1899)

I wouldn't want you to walk away with the impression that the Library of America edition of James is in any way complete, however. Perish the thought! Conspicuous among the absences are James's last two novels, unfinished and posthumously published: The Ivory Tower and The Sense of the Past (consituting, respectively, the last two volumes of the New York edition).

Then there are the plays (available in another fine edition by Leon Edel).

Leon Edel, ed. The Complete Plays of Henry James (1949)

Then there's his one, full-length biography, William Wetmore Story and His Friends (1903):

Henry James: William Wetmore Story and His Friends (1903)

Of course, there are reasons for allowing at least some of these to sink into oblivion. The biography was a duty job: forced upon him as an obligation to some friends, and not written from the heart (he didn't even like the sculptor Story very much).

The plays, too, were a kind of slow-motion disaster which had occupied much of his time in the 1890s, and came very near to breaking his heart:

"I'm the last, My Lord, of the Domvilles," as the eponymous hero of his play Guy Domville intoned in its one, abortive production.

"And it's a bloody good thing y'are!" a rough voice shouted from the stalls.

What else? There are facsimile editions of his annotated copies of early novels intended as guides for his later revisions - there are reprints, selections, re-editions, in basically every series of modern classics known to man. Truly, once you start, there's no obvious end to the number of books you need to collect to see this strangest of beings, this - in many ways - most loveable of writers, whole.

As a teacher of creative writing, I often find myself quoting his precept for young writers: "Dramatise!"

Even more often, though, I think of his three rules for civilised conduct:

1. Be kind
2. Be kind
3. Be kind

John Singer Sargent: Henry James (1913)

Henry James
(1843-1916)

Novels:


1. James, Henry. Watch and Ward. 1871 & 1878. Introduction by Leon Edel. 1959. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1960.


2. James, Henry. The American: The Version of 1877 Revised in Autograph and Typescript for the New York Edition of 1907. Reproduced in Facsimile from the Original in the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Introduction by Rodney G. Dennis. Houghton Library Manuscript Facsimiles, 1. 1976. London: Scolar Press, 1978.


3. James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady: An Authoritative Text / Henry James and the Novel / Reviews and Criticism. 1881. Ed. Robert D. Bamberg. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975.


4. James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady. 1881. Ed. Geoffrey Moore. 1984. Notes by Patricia Crick. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.


5. James, Henry. The Princess Casamassima. 1886. London: Heron Books / Macmillan & Co., n.d.


6. James, Henry. A London Life and The Reverberator. 1888 & 1908. Ed. Philip Horne. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.


7. James, Henry. The Tragic Muse. 1890. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.


8. James, Henry. The Other House. 1896. Introduction by Leon Edel. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1948.


9. James, Henry. The Spoils of Poynton. 1897. Penguin Modern Classics, 1922. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.


10. James, Henry. What Maisie Knew. 1897 & 1908. Ed. Douglas Jefferson & Douglas Grant. 1966. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.


11. James, Henry. The Awkward Age. 1899. With the Author’s Preface. New York Edition, 1908. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.


12. James, Henry. The Sacred Fount. 1901. With an Introductory Essay by Leon Edel. 1953. A Black Cat Book. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1979.


13. James, Henry. The Wings of the Dove: An Authoritative Text / The Author and the Novel / Criticism. 1902 & 1909. Ed. J. Donald Crowley & Richard A. Hocks. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978.


14. James, Henry. The Ambassadors: An Authoritative Text / The Author on the Novel / Criticism. 1903. Ed. S. P. Rosenbaum. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1964.


15. James, Henry. The Golden Bowl. 1904. With the Author’s Preface. Penguin Modern Classics, 2449. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.


16. James, Henry, with William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jordan, John Kendrick Bangs, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Edith Wyatt, Mary R. Shipman Andrews, Alice Brown & Henry Van Dyke. The Whole Family: A Novel by Twelve Authors. 1908. Introduction by Alfred Bendixen. New York: the Ungar Publishing Company, 1986.


17. James, Henry. The Outcry. Methuen's Colonial Library. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1911.


18. James, Henry. The Outcry. 1911. Introduction by Jean Strouse. New York Review Books Classics. New York: The New York Review of Books, 2002.


19. James, Henry. The Ivory Tower. Preface by Percy Lubbock. 1917. With an Essay by Ezra Pound. 1954. Introduction by Alan Hollinghurst. New York Review Books Classics. New York: The New York Review of Books, 2004.


20. James, Henry. The Sense of the Past. The Novels and Tales of Henry James: New York Edition, Volume XXVI. Preface by Percy Lubbock. 1917. Classic Reprint Series. N.p.: Forgotten Books [www.forgottenbooks.org], 2010.

Stories:


21. Aziz, Maqbool, ed. The Tales of Henry James. Volume One, 1864-1869. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.


22. James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw, The Aspern Papers and Other Stories. 1879-1910. Introduction by Michael Swan. Collins Classics. London: Collins, 1956.


23. James, Henry. Ghost Stories. Ed. Martin Scofield. Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2001.

Plays:


24. Edel, Leon, ed. The Complete Plays of Henry James. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1949.


25. James, Henry. Guy Domville: A Play in Three Acts. With Comments by Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett. Preceded by Biographical Chapters, Henry James: The Dramatic Years. Ed. Leon Edel. 1960. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961.


26. James, Henry. The Scenic Art: Notes on Acting and the Drama, 1872-1910. Ed. Allan Wade. Foreword by Leon Edel. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1949.

Travel:


27. Kaplan, Fred, ed. Travelling in Italy with Henry James: Essays. A John Curtis Book. London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1994.

Literary Criticism:


28. James, Henry. The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces. Introduction by Richard P. Blackmur. 1934. New York & London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947.


29. James, Henry. The House of Fiction: Essays on the Novel. Ed. Leon Edel. 1957. Mercury Books, 24. London: The Heinemann Group of Publishers, 1962.


30. James, Henry. Selected Literary Criticism. Ed. Morris Shapira. Preface by F. R. Leavis. 1963. A Peregrine Book Y73. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.

Biography & Autobiography:


31. James, Henry. William Wetmore Story and His Friends: From Letters, Diaries, and Recollections. In Two Volumes (Combined). 1903. London: Thames & Hudson, n.d.


32. James, Henry. Autobiography: A Small Boy and Others; Notes of a Son and Brother; The Middle Years. 1913, 1914, 1917. Ed. Frederick W. Dupree. London: W. H. Allen, 1956.

John Singer Sargent: Henry James (detail)

Bruxelles & la Bibliothèque de la Pléiade

Brussels: Grande Place

A long time ago in a country far, far away - called Belgium - I lived a life in what now seems to me almost an alternate universe.

I don't know how convinced you are by the physics of the multiverse: the infinite branching paths radiating out from each moment in each of our lives (or, for that matter, in the life of the cosmos), but certainly in my own life I can see certain moments of decision - certain choices which determined one chain of events or another.

Palmerston North

One of them was in Palmerston North, where I taught for a year at Massey University, and was offered at the end of it a new, improved half-time contract rather than the full-time one I'd been on.

On that occasion, a counter-offer of full-time work at Auckland was decisive. I returned to my home town, not without certain regrets, but forced by economic necessity.

Brussels: Kraainem

My brief life as potential citizen of Europe (or Eurotrash, if you prefer) built up over several years from the late eighties to the mid-nineties. It was all involved with my first marriage, to a London-born, Paris-educated, French, German and Flemish speaking girl whose quite wealthy family lived in one of the nicer suburbs of Brussels.

The only one of those languages I could really speak was French, but no doubt the others would have come in time (I have a reading knowledge of German, though no Flemish at all).

The moment of our break-up put paid to that life. Nearly a quarter of a century later, I can't say I'm sorry. There's a certain comfort, as well as a certain complexity, in making your life in the place you originally came from. I do miss speaking French every day, but returning to New Zealand with the determination to try and get to know it properly for the first time has been as absorbing as any life task could be.

Some of the reliquaries of that vanished life include a large library of French books. One or two of them I should probably have returned to Jackie-Anne when we split up our few sticks of property, but I guess I hung on to them because they would be so much easier for her to replace than for me to reacquire (this was long before the days of Amazon.com and such digital gateways to virtually all the books in existence).

Tintin murals: Stockel metro station

I did send back a whole lot of things, but some I overlooked at the time. Since she kept everything we had in the other country, I imagine it worked out pretty equally. If not, it's all a long time ago now. I hope I learned some things about avoiding pettiness on such occasions as a result, though. It certainly confirmed my agreement with that old Shakespearean tag: 'He jests at scars who never felt a wound.'

Marriage break-ups, like any other emotional upheaval, are not to be taken lightly - and it's been a help to me many times since to remember my own feelings at the time. I don't feel judgemental about excesses of behaviour which might otherwise seem inexplicable.

Some people are able to stay on civil terms with their ex's. I wish that were true of me, too, but it isn't. I envy their maturity, but - again - it's helped me to understand why people will change countries, let alone cities, to avoid any casual encounters.

Bibliothèque de la Pléiade

These are some of the thoughts I have when I examine the following maniacal-seeming list of books belonging to the magisterial French collection of classics, the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. If you notice obvious gaps, that's probably because I have a lot of other French books in less impressive forms.

And if you've got sick of these long lists of books-in-particular-series I've been putting up on this blog, all I can say is that I suspect this will be the last of them for a while. So far my lists-of-lists have included:

1. La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (1931- ) [41]
2. The Folio Society (1947- ) [95]
3. The Landmark Ancient Histories (1996- ) [5]
4. The Library of America (1979- ) [92]
5. The Loeb Classics (1912- ) [59]
6. Longman Annotated English Poets (1965- ) [12]
7. The Nonesuch Library (1927-77) [16]
8. Norton Annotated Editions (2000- ) [20]
9. Oxford Myths and Legends (1954- ) [19]
10. Penguin Modern Poets (1962-83) [28]
11. Penguin Modern European Poets (1958-84) [40]
12. Penguin Poets in Translation (1996-2005) [12]
13. The Reynard Library (1950-71) [7]
14. Russian Foreign Languages Publishing House (1946-64) [40]

It's the Pléiade which has the most tender, still smarting associations, however.

I'll never regret that other life I almost started to live, but the life I live now is so much more satisfactory in every way, that I have to say that my main feeling about the whole thing now is gratitude both for the amazing opportunity, and also for the fact that I ended up taking another road - the road home, the one less travelled by.

Maybe I'll write more about it someday.

Auckland: Mairangi Bay

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La Pléiade (1931- )

Ma bibliothèque

MES LIVRES

41 ouvrages / 26 auteurs

1. Anonyme





Les Mille et Une Nuits: Tome I (2005)



• Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits. Tome 1: Nuits 1 à 327. 3 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 515. Paris: Gallimard, 2005.

Parution le 13 Mai 2005, 1312 pages, 68.00 €





Les Mille et Une Nuits: Tome II (2006)



• Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits. Tome 2: Nuits 327 à 719. 3 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 526. Paris: Gallimard, 2006.

Parution le 12 Octobre 2006, 1104 pages, 61.00 €





Les Mille et Une Nuits: Tome III (2006)



• Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits. Tome 3: Nuits 719 à 1001. 3 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 527. Paris: Gallimard, 2006.

Parution le 12 Octobre 2006 1088 pages, 61.00 €





Margaret Sironval: Album Mille et Une Nuits: Iconographie commentée (2005)



• Album Mille et Une Nuits : Iconographie. Choisie et commentée par Margaret Sironval. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Albums de la Pléiade, n° 44. Paris: Gallimard, 2005.

Parution le 13 Mai 2005, 272 pages, 248 ill.




2. Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki [Guillaume Apollinaire] (1880-1918)





Guillaume Apollinaire : Œuvres poétiques complètes (1956)



• Apollinaire, Guillaume. Œuvres poétiques : Le Bestiaire - Alcools - Vitam impendere amori - Calligrammes - Il y a - Poèmes à Lou - Le Guetteur mélancolique - Poèmes à Madeleine - Poèmes à la marraine - Poèmes retrouvés - Poèmes épistolaires - Poèmes inédits. Théâtre : Les Mamelles de Tirésias - Couleur du temps - Casanova. Ed. Marcel Adéma & Michel Décaudin. Préface d'André Billy. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 121. 1956. Paris: Gallimard, 1990.

Parution en Décembre 1956, 1344 pages, 59.00 €





Guillaume Apollinaire : Œuvres en prose complètes: Tome I (1977)



• Apollinaire, Guillaume. Œuvres en prose complètes I : Contes et récits : L'Enchanteur pourrissant - L'Hérésiarque et Cie - Le Poète assassiné - Contes écartés du «Poète assassiné» - La Femme assise - Contes retrouvés - La Fin de Babylone - Les Trois Don Juan - La Femme blanche des Hohenzollern. Théâtre : La Température - Le marchand d'anchois - Jean-Jacques - La colombelle - Fragments divers. Cinéma : La Bréhatine - C'est un oiseau qui vient de France. Ed. Michel Décaudin. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 267. 1977. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.

Parution le 14 Mai 1977, 1584 pages, 60.00 €





Guillaume Apollinaire : Œuvres en prose complètes: Tome II (1991)



• Apollinaire, Guillaume. Œuvres en prose complètes II : Écrits sur l'art : Méditations esthétiques - Les Peintres cubistes - Fragonard et l'Amérique - Chroniques et paroles sur l'art. Critique littéraire : La Phalange nouvelle - Les Poèmes de l'année - Les Poètes d'aujourd'hui - [Sur la littérature féminine] - L'Antitradition futuriste - L'Esprit nouveau et les Poètes. Chroniques et articles : Théories et polémiques - Portraits et silhouettes - Critique - Variétés. Échos sur les lettres et les arts. Ed. Pierre Caizergues & Michel Décaudin. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 382. Paris: Gallimard, 1991.

Parution le 20 Novembre 1991, 1872 pages, 74.50 €





Guillaume Apollinaire : Œuvres en prose complètes: Tome III (1993)



• Apollinaire, Guillaume. Œuvres en prose complètes III : Le Flâneur des deux rives - La Vie anecdotique - Chroniques et échos - Les Diables amoureux. Appendices : Essai sur la littérature sotadique au XIXe siècle - L'Arétin et son temps - [Les Fleurs du Mal] - Lettre à Louis Chadourne. Textes érotiques : Les Onze Mille Verges - Les Exploits d'un jeune don Juan. Compléments : théâtre : Un buveau d'absinthe qui a lu Victor Hugo - À la cloche de bois. Pièce en un acte - Revue de l'année : la Vérité sur la vie et le théâtre. Compléments : contes : [Projet de contes] - Un vol à la cour de Prusse - Le Roi Lune - Héloïse ou Dieu même. Chroniques et échos. Ed. Pierre Caizergues & Michel Décaudin. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 399. Paris: Gallimard, 1993.

Parution le 13 Mai 1993, 1632 pages, 76.00 €




3. Georges Bataille (1897-1962)





Georges Bataille : Romans et récits (2004)



• Bataille, Georges. Romans et récits : Histoire de l'œil - Le Bleu du ciel - Madame Edwarda - Le Petit - Le Mort - Julie - L'Impossible - La Scissiparité - L'Abbé C - Ma mère - Charlotte d'Ingerville - Archives du projet «Divinus Deus». Appendices : Récits retrouvés - La Maison brûlée - Ébauches. Ed. Jean-François Louette. Preface by Denis Hollier. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 511. Paris: Gallimard, 2004.

Parution le 18 Novembre 2004, 1552 pages, ill., 66.00 €




4. Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867)





Charles Baudelaire : Œuvres complètes: Tome I (1931)



• Baudelaire, Charles. Œuvres. Tome 1 : Les Fleurs du Mal - Le Spleen de Paris - Les Paradis artificiels - Essais et nouvelles - Théâtre - Critique littéraire - Critique artistique - Richard Wagner - Journaux intimes - Pauvre Belgique - Amœnitates Belgicæ - Traductions de l'anglais. Ed. Y.-G. Le Dantec. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1. 1931. Paris: Gallimard, 1944.

Ancienne édition, Parution le 2 Octobre 1931, 666 pages




5. Albert Camus (1913-1960)





Albert Camus : Théâtre – Récits et nouvelles (1962)



• Camus, Albert. Théâtre – Récits et nouvelles : Théâtre : Caligula - Le Malentendu - L'État de siège - Les Justes - Révolte dans les Asturies. Adaptations : Les Esprits - La Dévotion à la croix - Un Cas intéressant - Le Chevalier d'Olmedo - Requiem pour une nonne - Les Possédés. Récits et nouvelles : L'Étranger - La Peste - La Chute - L'Exil et le royaume : La Femme adultère. Le Renégat. Les Muets. L'Hôte. Jonas. La Pierre qui pousse. Ed. Roger Quilliot. Préface de Jean Grenier. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 161. 1962. Paris: Gallimard, 2005.

Ancienne édition, Parution le 13 Décembre 1962, 2128 pages





Albert Camus : Essais (1965)



• Camus, Albert. Essais : L'Envers et l'Endroit - Noces - Le Mythe de Sisyphe - Lettres à un ami allemand (1943-1944) - Actuelles I, chroniques 1944-1948 - L'Homme révolté - Actuelles II, chroniques 1948-1953 - L'Été - Actuelles III, chroniques algériennes 1939-1958 - Réflexions sur la guillotine - Discours de Suède (1957). Essais critiques : Introduction aux « Maximes » de Chamfort - Avant-propos à « La Maison du peuple », de Louis Guilloux - Rencontres avec André Gide - L'Artiste en prison - Roger Martin du Gard - Sur « Les Îles », de Jean Grenier - René Char. Appendices : Métaphysique chrétienne et néoplatonisme - Articles, préfaces, interviews, inédits. Ed. Roger Quilliot & Louis Faucon. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 183. 1965. Paris: Gallimard, 1981.

Épuisé, Parution le 8 Décembre 1965, 2000 pages




6. Paul Claudel (1868-1955)





Paul Claudel : Théâtre: Tome I (1948)



• Claudel, Paul. Théâtre. Tome 1 : L'Endormie - Fragment d'un drame - Tête d'or (1re et 2e versions) - La Ville (1re et 2e versions) - La Jeune fille Violaine (1re et 2e versions) - L'Échange (1re et 2e versions) - Le Repos du septième jour - Partage de midi (1re version et version pour la scène). Traductions d'Eschyle : Agamemnon - Les Choéphores - Les Euménides. Ed. Jacques Madaule & Jacques Petit. 2 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 72. 1947. Paris: Gallimard, 1991.

Ancienne édition, Parution en Avril 1948, 1440 pages





Paul Claudel : Théâtre: Tome II (1948)



• Claudel, Paul. Théâtre. Tome 2 : L'Annonce faite à Marie (1re version et version pour la scène) - L'Otage - Protée (1re et 2e versions) - Le Pain dur - Le Père humilié - La Nuit de Noël 1914 - L'Ours et la Lune - L'Homme et son désir - La Femme et son ombre (1re et 2e versions) - Le Peuple des hommes cassés - Le Soulier de satin (version intégrale et version pour la scène) - Sous le rempart d'Athènes - Le Livre de Christophe Colomb - La Parabole du festin - La Sagesse ou La Parabole du Festin - Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher - Le Jet de pierre - La Danse des morts - L'Histoire de Tobie et de Sara - La Lune à la recherche d'elle-même - Le Ravissement de Scapin. Ed. Jacques Madaule & Jacques Petit. 2 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 73. 1948. Paris: Gallimard, 1965.

Ancienne édition, Parution le 23 Mars 1948, 1568 pages




7. Denis Diderot (1713-1784)





Denis Diderot : Œuvres (1946)



• Diderot, Denis. Œuvres : Les Bijoux indiscrets - La Religieuse - Le Neveu de Rameau - Jacques le fataliste et son maître - Lui et moi - Les Deux amis de Bourbonne - Entretien d'un père avec ses enfants - Ceci n'est pas un conte - Sur l'inconséquence du jugement publique de nos actions particulières - Mon père et moi - Lettre à mon frère - Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient - Entretien avec d'Alembert - Le rêve de d'Alembert - Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre - Sur les femmes - Sur l'estampe de Cochin - Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville - Paradoxe sur le comédien - Éloge de Richardson - Traité du Beau - Essai sur la peinture - Entretien d'un philosophe avec la Maréchale de *** - Satire I sur les caractères et les mots de caractère, de profession, etc. - Entretiens sur «Le fils naturel» - Des auteurs et des critiques - Lettres de Madame Riccoboni. Ed. André Billy. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 25. 1946. Paris: Gallimard, 1969.

Ancienne édition, Parution le 25 Septembre 1946, 1478 pages




8. Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie [Alexandre Dumas, père] (1802-1870)





Alexandre Dumas : Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1981)



• Dumas, Alexandre. Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. 1845-46. Ed. Gilbert Sigaux. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 290. Paris: Gallimard, 1981.

Parution le 6 Mai 1981, 1504 pages, 60.00 €




9. André Paul Guillaume Gide (1869-1951)





André Gide : Romans – Récits et soties – Œuvres lyriques (1958)



• Gide, André. Romans; Récits et Soties; Œuvres lyriques : Le Traité du Narcisse - Le Voyage d'Urien - La Tentative amoureuse - Paludes - Les Nourritures terrestres - Les Nouvelles Nourritures - Le Prométhée mal enchaîné - El Hadj ou Le Traité du faux prophète - L'Immoraliste - Le Retour de l'Enfant Prodigue - La Porte Étroite - Isabelle - Les Caves du Vatican - La Symphonie pastorale - Les Faux-Monnayeurs - L'École des femmes - Robert - Geneviève ou La confidence inachevée - Thésée. Introduction by Maurice Nadeau. Ed. Yvonne Davet & Jean-Jacques Thierry. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 139. 1958. Paris: Gallimard, 1980.

Ancienne édition, Parution le 13 Novembre 1958, 1664 pages




10. Louis Poirier ['Julien Gracq'] (1910-2007)





Julien Gracq : Œuvres complètes: Tome I (1989)



• Gracq, Julien. Œuvres complètes. Tome 1 : Au château d'Argol - Un beau ténébreux - Liberté grande - Le Roi pêcheur - André Breton. Quelques aspects de l'écrivain - La Littérature à l'estomac - Le Rivage des Syrtes - Préférences. Appendices : Éclosion de la pierre - Un cauchemar - Le Surréalisme et la Littérature contemporaine - Prose pour l'étrangère - Enquête sur la diction poétique - Kleist : «Penthésilée» - Entretien sur «Penthésilée» de H. von Kleist. Ed. Bernhild Boie. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 354. Paris: Gallimard, 1989.

Parution le 4 Avril 1989, 1536 pages, 74.50 €




11. Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803)





Choderlos de Laclos : Œuvres complètes (1944)



• Choderlos de Laclos. Œuvres complètes : Les Liaisons dangereuses - De l'éducation des femmes - Poésies - Critique littéraire - Sur l'éloge de Vauban - Œuvres politiques - Appendices. Ed. Maurice Allem. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 6. 1944. Paris: Gallimard, 1959.

Ancienne édition, Parution le 16 Mars 1944, 942 pages




12. Stéphane [Étienne] Mallarmé (1842-1898)





Stéphane Mallarmé : Œuvres complètes (1945)



• Mallarmé, Stéphane. Œuvres complètes : Poëmes d'enfance et de jeunesse - Poésies - Vers de circonstance - Les Poëmes d'Edgar Poe - Proses de jeunesse - Poèmes en prose - Crayonné au théâtre - Variations sur un sujet - Un Coup de dés - Quelques médaillons et portraits en pied - Richard Wagner - Préface à «Wathek» - Le «Ten o'clock» de M. Whistler - Contes indiens - La Musique et les Lettres - Proses diverses - Les Mots anglais - Thèmes anglais - Les Dieux antiques - L'Étoile des fées. Ed. Henri Mondor & G. Jean-Aubry. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 65. 1945. Paris: Gallimard, 1992.

Épuisé, Parution le 12 Juin 1945, 1696 pages




13. André Malraux (1901-1976)





André Malraux : Romans (1947)



• Malraux, André. Romans : Les Conquérants - La Voie royale - La Condition humaine - L'Espoir. 1928, 1930, 1946, 1937. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 70. 1947. Paris: Gallimard, 1978.

Épuisé, Parution en Juin 1947, 864 pages




14. Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870)





Prosper Mérimée : Romans et nouvelles (1934)



• Mérimée, Prosper. Romans et nouvelles : Chronique du règne de Charles IX - Mosaïque - La Double méprise - Les Âmes du purgatoire - La Vénus d'Ille - Colomba - Arsène Guillot - Carmen - L'Abbé Aubain - Il Viccolo di Madame Lucrezia - La Chambre bleue - Lokis - Djoûmane. Appendice : Histoire de Rondino. Ed. Henri Martineau. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 21. Paris: Gallimard, 1934.

Ancienne édition, Parution le 30 Novembre 1934, 864 pages




15. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin ['Molière'] (1622-1673)





Molière : Œuvres complètes: Tome I (1972)



• Molière. Œuvres complètes. Tome 1 : La Jalousie du Barbouillé - Le Médecin volant - L'Étourdi ou Les Contretemps - Le Dépit amoureux - Les Précieuses ridicules - Sganarelle ou Le Cocu imaginaire - Dom Garcie de Navarre ou le Prince jaloux - L'École des Maris - Les Fâcheux - L'École des Femmes - Remerciement au Roi - La Critique de l'École des Femmes - L'Impromptu de Versailles - Le Mariage forcé - Les Plaisirs de l'Île enchantée - La Princesse d'Élide - Le Tartuffe ou L'Imposteur - Appendices. Ed. Georges Couton. 2 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 8. 1972. Paris: Gallimard, 1981.

Ancienne édition, Parution le 23 Février 1972, 1488 pages





Molière : Œuvres complètes: Tome II (1972)



• Molière. Œuvres complètes. Tome 2 : Dom Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre - L'Amour médecin - Le Misanthrope - Le Médecin malgré lui - Le Bal des Muses - Pastorale comique - Mélicerte - Le Sicilien ou L'amour peintre - Amphitryon - Le Grand divertissement royal de Versailles - George Dandin ou Le Mari confondu - L'Avare - Monsieur de Pourceaugnac - Les Amants magnifiques - Le Bourgeois gentilhomme - Psyché - Les Fourberies de Scapin - La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas - Les Femmes savantes - Le Malade imaginaire - Œuvres diverses - Appendices. Ed. Georges Couton. 2 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 9. 1972. Paris: Gallimard, 1981.

Ancienne édition, Parution le 23 Février 1972, 1584 pages




16. Georges Perec (1936-1982)





Georges Perec : Œuvres: Tome I (2017)



• Perec, Georges. Œuvres I : Les Choses - Quel petit vélo à guidon chromé au fond de la cour? - Un homme qui dort - La Disparition - Les revenentes - Espèces d'espaces - W ou Le souvenir d'enfance - Je me souviens. Ed. Christelle Reggiani, with Dominique Bertelli, Claude Burgelin, Florence de Chalonge, Maxime Decout & Yannick Séité. 2 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 623. Paris: Gallimard, 2017.

Parution le 11 Mai 2017, 1184 pages, 61.50 €





Georges Perec : Œuvres: Tome II (2017)



• Perec, Georges. Œuvres II : La Vie mode d'emploi - Un cabinet d'amateur - La Clôture et autres poèmes - L'Éternité. Appendice : Tentative d'épuisement d'un lieu parisien - Le Voyage d'hiver - Ellis Island - L'art et la manière d'aborder son chef de service pour lui demander une augmentation - L'Augmentation. Ed. Christelle Reggiani, with Claude Burgelin, Maxime Decout, Maryline Heck et Jean-Luc Joly. 2 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 624. Paris: Gallimard, 2017.

Parution le 11 Mai 2017, 1280 pages, 63.50 €





Claude Burgelin : Album Georges Perec (2017)



• Burgelin, Claude. Album Georges Perec : Iconographie commentée. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Albums de la Pléiade, n° 56. Paris: Gallimard, 2017.

Parution le 11 Mai 2017, 256 pages, 202 ill.




17. Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa (1888-1935)





Fernando Pessoa : Œuvres poétiques (2001)



• Pessoa, Fernando. Œuvres poétiques : Alberto Caeiro : Le Gardeur de troupeaux - Le Berger amoureux - Poèmes non assemblés. Ricardo Reis : Odes. Livre premier - Odes publiées dans la revue «Presença» - Odes éparses. Álvaro de Campos : Premiers poèmes - Les Grandes odes - Autour des grandes odes - Derniers poèmes. Fernando Pessoa : Poèmes paülistes, sensationnistes et intersectionnistes - Pour un «Cancioneiro» - Sonnets - Quatrains - Rubayat - Poèmes politiques - Poèmes ésotériques et métaphysiques - Message - En marge de «Message» - Praça da Figueira - Un Soir à Lima - Poésie humoristique et vers de circonstance. Poésie anglaise : Poèmes d'Alexander Search - Épithalame - Antinoüs - Trente-cinq sonnets - Inscriptions - Le Violoneux fou - Poèmes anglais épars. Appendices : Poèmes de jeunesse - Aux frontières de la littérature : les poèmes français. Ed. Patrick Quillier. Trans. Olivier Amiel, Maria Antónia Câmara Manuel, Michel Chandeigne, Pierre Léglise-Costa et Patrick Quillier. Préface de Robert Bréchon. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 482. Paris: Gallimard, 2001.

Parution le 14 Novembre 2001, 2176 pages, 76.00 €




18. Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (1871-1922)





Marcel Proust : À la recherche du temps perdu: Tome I (1954)



• Proust, Marcel. À la recherche du temps perdu. Tome 1 : Du Côté de chez Swann - À l’Ombre des jeunes filles en fleur. Preface by André Maurois. Ed. Pierre Clarac & André Ferré. 3 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 100. 1954. Paris: Gallimard, 1964.

Épuisé, Parution le 30 Novembre 1954, 1056 pages





Marcel Proust : À la recherche du temps perdu: Tome II (1954)



• Proust, Marcel. À la recherche du temps perdu. Tome 2 : Le Côté de Guermantes - Sodome et Gomorrhe. Ed. Pierre Clarac & André Ferré. 3 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 101. 1954. Paris: Gallimard, 1973.

Épuisé, Parution le 30 Novembre 1954, 1232 pages





Marcel Proust : À la recherche du temps perdu: Tome III (1954)



• Proust, Marcel. À la recherche du temps perdu. Tome 3 : La Prisonnière - La Fugitive - Le Temps retrouvé. Ed. Pierre Clarac & André Ferré. 3 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 102. Paris: Gallimard, 1954.

Épuisé, Parution le 30 Novembre 1954, 1344 pages





Marcel Proust : Jean Santeuil précédé de Les Plaisirs et les Jours (1971)



• Proust, Marcel. Jean Santeuil précédé de Les Plaisirs et les Jours. Ed. Pierre Clarac & Yves Sandre. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 228. Paris: Gallimard, 1971.

Release on 29 Septembre 1971, 1136 pages, 49.00 €





Marcel Proust : Contre Sainte-Beuve précédé de Pastiches et mélanges suivi de Essais et articles (1971)



• Proust, Marcel. Contre Sainte-Beuve précédé de Pastiches et mélanges et suivi de Essais et articles. Ed. Pierre Clarac & Yves Sandre. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 229. Paris: Gallimard, 1971.

Release on 29 Septembre 1971, 1040 pages, 49.70 €




19. Jean Racine (1639-1699)





Jean Racine : Œuvres complètes: Tome I (1931)



• Racine. Oeuvres complètes I : Théâtre : La Thébaïde ou les frères ennemis - Alexandre Le Grand - Andromaque - Les Plaideurs - Britannicus - Bérénice - Bajazet - Mithridate - Iphigénie - Phèdre - Esther - Athalie. Poésies : Épigrammes - Cantiques spirituels - Paysage ou les promenades de Port-Royal-Des-Champs - Poésies latines. Ed. Raymond Picard. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 50. 1931. Paris: Gallimard, 1964.

Épuisé, Parution en Décembre 1931, 1216 pages




20. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944)





Antoine de Saint-Exupéry : Œuvres (1953)



• Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. Œuvres : Courrier Sud - Vol de nuit - Terre des hommes - Pilote de guerre - Lettre à un otage - Le Petit Prince - Citadelle. Preface de Roger Callois. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 98. 1953. Paris: Gallimard, 1959.

Épuisé, Parution en Novembre 1953, 1056 pages, ill.




21. Alexis Leger [Saint-John Perse] (1887-1975)





Saint-John Perse : Œuvres complètes (1972)



• Saint-John Perse. Œuvres complètes : Œuvre poétique : Éloges - La Gloire des rois - Anabase - Exil - Vents - Amers - Chronique - Oiseaux - Chanté par celle qui fut là - Chant pour un équinoxe. Prose : Discours - Hommages - Témoignages. Correspondance : Lettres de jeunesse - Lettres d'Asie - Lettres d'exil. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 240. 1972. Paris: Gallimard, 2004.

Parution le 27 Novembre 1972, 1472 pages, 56.00 €




22. Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (1905-1980)





Jean-Paul Sartre : Œuvres romanesques (1982)



• Sartre, Jean-Paul. Œuvres Romanesque : La Nausée - Le Mur. Les Chemins de la liberté : L'Âge de raison - Le Sursis - La Mort dans l'âme - Drôle d'amitié. Appendices : Dépaysement - La Mort dans l'âme [Fragments de journal] - La Dernière chance [Fragments]. Ed. Michel Contat & Michel Rybalka, with Geneviève Idt & George H. Bauer. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 295. Paris: Gallimard, 1981.

Parution le 13 Janvier 1982, 2304 pages, 73.50 €




23. Somadeva (c.11th century)





Somadeva : Océan des rivières de contes (1997)



• Somadeva. Océan des rivières de contes. Ed. Nalini Balbir, with Mildrède Besnard, Lucien Billoux, Sylvain Brocquet, Colette Caillat, Christine Chojnacki, Jean Fezas & Jean-Pierre Osier. Traduction des ‘Contes du Vampire’ par Louis & Marie-Simone Renou, 1963. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 438. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.

Parution le 5 Septembre 1997, 1792 pages, ill., 76.00 €




24. Marie-Henri Beyle ['Stendhal'] (1783-1842)





Stendhal : Voyages en Italie (1973)



• Stendhal. Voyages en Italie : Rome, Naples et Florence en 1817 - L'Italie en 1818 - Rome, Naples et Florence (1826) - Promenades dans Rome. Suppléments : Les Marionnettes - Lettres de Rome à Romain Colomb - Les Ambassadeurs, etc. Ed. V. Del Litto. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 249. Paris: Gallimard, 1973.

Parution le 26 Octobre 1973, 1920 pages, 60.00 €




25. Paul-Marie Verlaine (1844-1896)





Paul Verlaine : Œuvres poétiques complètes (1938)



• Verlaine, Paul. Œuvres poétiques complètes : Premiers vers - Poèmes saturniens - Fêtes galantes - Poèmes contemporains des «Poèmes saturniens» et des «Fêtes galantes» - La Bonne chanson - Contribution à l'«Album zutique» - Romances sans paroles - Poèmes contemporains de «La bonne chanson» et des «Romances sans paroles» - Sagesse - Reliquat de «Cellulairement» et poèmes contemporains de «Sagesse» - Jadis et naguère - Amour - Parallèlement - Poèmes contemporains de «Parallèlement» - Dédicaces - Bonheur - Chansons pour elle - Liturgies intimes - Odes en son honneur - Élégies - Le Livre posthume - Dans les limbes - Épigrammes - Chair - Invectives - Biblio-sonnets - Poèmes divers. Œuvres libres : Femmes - Hombres. Ed. Y.-G. Le Dantec. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 47. 1938. Paris: Gallimard, 1954.

Parution en Juillet 1938, 1600 pages, 61.00 €




26. Blessed Jacobus de Varagine / Voragine [Giacomo da Varazze / Jacopo da Varazze] (c.1230–1298)





Jacques de Voragine : La Légende dorée (2004)



• Voragine, Jacques de. La Légende dorée. Preface by Jacques Le Goff. Ed. Alain Bouveau, Monique Goullet, Pascal Colomb, Laurence Moulinier, & Stefano Mula. ‘La Legende dorée et ses images’, by Dominique Donadieu-Rigaut. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 504. Paris: Gallimard, 2004.

Parution le 11 Mars 2004, 1664 pages, 197 ill., 69.00 €