NAPOLÉON Ier (1769-1821) Empereur. - Lot 759

Lot 759
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Result : 10 660EUR
NAPOLÉON Ier (1769-1821) Empereur. - Lot 759
NAPOLÉON Ier (1769-1821) Empereur. AUTHORIZED MANUSCRIPT, Clisson et, [1795]; 1 page small in-fol. (28.5 x 9.3 cm). Rare and precious beginning of Bonaparte's early novel, Clisson et Eugénie . It was in 1795, at the age of twenty-six, that Bonaparte wrote this short 27-page novel, Clisson et Eugénie, inspired by his thwarted affair with Désirée-Eugénie Clary, whose older sister Julie had married Joseph Bonaparte, and who herself married Bernadotte. The novel tells the story of the young warrior Clisson, in whose features Napoleon is easily recognizable; in love with Amélie, his heart suddenly turns to Eugénie; their love will be spoiled by treachery, but ennobled by war. The manuscript of Clisson and Eugenie has been dispersed. After a first partial publication by Albéric Cahuet, "Napoleon romancier: pages inédites d'une œuvre de jeunesse" (L'Illustration, January 17, 1920), Simon Askenazy gave in 1929 an edition based on the incomplete manuscript preserved in Poland (Manuscrits de Napoléon 1793-1795 en Pologne, Warsaw, 1929, p. 93-102); after the discovery of the missing fragment at the sale of the André de Coppet collection in 1955, the full text was published in Nouveau Fémina in September 1955, and taken up by Jean Tulard in his edition of Napoleon's Literary Works and Military Writings (Tchou, 2001, vol. II, pp. 331-342). In 2007, Émilie Barthet and Peter Hicks produced a scholarly edition, with all the fragments recovered. There are six of these fragments, the largest (13 pages) being in the Biblioteka Kornicka in Kornik, Poland, and two others (2 and 4 pages) in the Moscow State Historical Museum (former Orloff collection); the 4 pages from the Karpeles Manuscript Museum in Santa Barbara were sold by Bonhams in New York on 21 September 2016 (no. 1151). Our manuscript is thus one of the three fragments in private hands of Clisson and Eugenie, designated by Peter Hicks as the Ms 5 : " " It is, according to us, the most accomplished version of the beginning of the
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