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Germinal, édition originale
Émile ZOLA
Paris - Charpentier - 1893
- Bookbinder : Semet & Plumelle
- Format : Fort in-12
- Number of volumes : 1 volume
- Binding : Hardcover
- Collation : 1 pl. - 390 pp - 1f.
Bound in carmine jansenist morocco. Spine ribbed. Vermilion morocco lining framed with gilt fillet, salmon silk jacquard and bisque guard with squared decoration. Touches gilt edges. Untrimmed. Covers preserved and lined. Binding signed Maylander.
FIRST EDITION. One of the numbered copies on Hollande paper, the second largest paper after only 10 japons.
Enriched copy with a letter from the author on the title page (name of addressee erased) and a business card from Zola mounted on a tab, bearing this autograph message: " As Le Châtelet is playing 'Germinal' against my will, I will not be going to the theater tonight, and I apologize to you, to whom I cannot send a seat. Emile Zola.
Germinal is the pinnacle of the Rougon-Macquart series, an immense, prophetic work by an author sure of his craft and sure of success. A well-documented author, who studied the essays, pamphlets and scathing articles of his time about a people who were being exploited but who were organizing themselves; a Zola who was more of a journalist than ever, who studied the great strikes of the late Empire and the bloodbaths that followed. So he travels to the north of France and dons the miner's clothes himself, before descending 476 meters to the side of the men swallowed by the Voreux, those "people we had thought unworthy of being characters in a novel" (Armand Lanoux).
Étienne Lantier, like his creator, discovers the mine as he plunges in. The work is hard and doesn't pay. The workers, the work, the mine and the bosses, all collide. "Is it possible for men to kill themselves at such a hard job and not even earn a few pennies for their daily bread? Étienne organized the anger, and the strike was declared.
In March 1884, when Zola was working on this thirteenth volume of Les Rougon-Macquart, the Waldeck-Rousseau law was passed, authorizing the creation of professional unions, the first milestone in a history that the author saw coming with great acuity.
Very nice copy
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