1838 H. de Balzac, Physiology of Marriage, Charpentier, in-18, fine period binding

  
First Charpentier edition, marking the beginning of the in-18 format. A very fine copy in a handsome period binding.

PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE, or Meditations on Eclectic Philosophy on Marital Happiness and Misfortune, by H. New edition, similar to that of The Physiology of Taste published by the same publisher. 1 volume in-18 (18 x 11.5 cm), XXII-408-(2) pages. Dark green half Russian leather binding, smooth spine decorated with gilt rolls, marbled paper boards, white paper endpapers and pastedowns, parchment corners (period binding).

Interior very fresh despite the usual foxing (the first and last leaves are more affected than the others). First Charpentier edition in this format.

The original edition of Balzac’s Physiology of Marriage appeared at the end of December 1829, dated 1830, in 2 in-8 volumes.

A second edition was published in 1834, also in 2 in-8 volumes. Then came the four Charpentier editions.

The first, in 1838, ours, inaugurated, together with a few other early titles, the launch of the Bibliothèque Charpentier in the English in-18 format, known as the Charpentier format, followed by the editions of 1840, 1843, and 1848. It was to counter Belgian piracy that Gervais Charpentier created his in-18 collection, with compact typography and low cost.

A Belgian pirated edition had in fact appeared in Brussels in 1834, published by Méline.

The publication of The Physiology of Marriage caused a scandal, but all Paris considered it an event, and Balzac’s success was unprecedented, all the more so because people wanted to know who was hiding behind the anonymous signature of the young bachelor who immediately became a fashionable author (1830). At once essay, meditation, and narrative, the text moves between a study of manners and an analytical treatise. It is in this latter genre that the fifth edition of the work (Furne) would classify it in 1846 in the section Analytical Studies of The Human Comedy.

But despite its daring character for the time, and its structure unlike the Balzacian novel, The Physiology laid the foundations of The Human Comedy.

A few Balzacian aphorisms on women and marriage:
A respectable woman is essentially a married woman.
A respectable woman is a woman under forty.
A married woman whose favors are paid for is not a respectable woman.

When a man has earned an annual income of twenty thousand livres, his wife is a respectable woman, whatever kind of business he used to make his fortune.
A respectable woman is one whom people fear to compromise.
A banker’s wife is always a respectable woman; but a woman seated in a shop counter can only be so if her husband does a very large business and she does not live above his shop.

A delicious volume, in which biting and realistic humor is present on every page.

A very fine copy preserved in its elegant original period binding. This in-18 edition of Balzac’s Physiology of Marriage marks an important date in the history of nineteenth-century publishing.

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