Sylvie, Gerard de Nerval 1886 Chambolle-Duru Binding. Sylvie is a novel by Gerard de Nerval, in a fabulous binding by Chambolle-Duru, one of the finest French binders of the nineteenth century. The title page reads “Gerard De Nerval, Sylvie Souvenirs Du Valois, Preface Par Ludovic Halevy, 42 compositions designees et gravures a l’eau forte Par Ed. Rudaux, Paris, Librairie L. Conquet, 5, Rue Drouot, 5 1886”, and the half-title reads ‘“Sylvie - Souvenirs Du Valois”, which means “memories of Valois”, the last name of the royal house that ruled France from 1328 to 1589. The book is a limited and numbered edition, and the limitation page reads “Tirage: 1000 Exemplaires [Planches Effaces] 150 sur grand papier du Japon Imperial, 850 sur petit papier dont 25 sur Japon; et 825 sur velin”; this is number 858 of all the copies, with the initials “L.G” on the limitation page - “L.G.” stands for Gerard Labrunie, the real name of Gerard De Nerval - and this is a first edition as well. The book is considered a novella, which is a narrative work of fiction which falls between a short story and a regular novel - it is shorter than most novels, but longer than a short story, and it was written by Gerard De Nerval, the pen name of Gerard Labrunie (1808 - 1855), a French writer, poet, and a major figure of French romanticism; he was best known for his novellas and poems, especially his collection Les Filles du feu (The Daughters of Fire), which included Sylvie and the poem "El Desdichado". He also translated German works into French, which introduced readers in France to the works of German authors such as Schiller and Goethe. For Marcel Proust, Nerval was one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century. Proust especially admired Sylvie's exploration of time lost and regained, which would become one of Proust's deepest interests and the dominant theme of his magnum opus In Search of Lost Time. Later, André Breton named Nerval a precursor to Surrealist art, which reflected Nerval's interest in the significance of dreams, and others compared Nerval's visionary poetry to the work of Nietzsche and Van Gogh. Nerval had a pet lobster named Thibault, which he walked at the end of a blue silk ribbon down the sidewalks of Paris, if that means anything; Nerval suffered a nervous breakdown in the early 1840’s, and in 1853, he suffered three more breakdowns and spent five months in an asylum. When Sylvie was first published in a periodical in 1853 and in 1854 in his book titled “Les Filles du feu”, Nerval saw Les Filles du feu as an opportunity to show the public, his friends and his father that he was sane - but he struggled with poverty in his last few years, and eventually killed himself in 1855. Van Gogh would follow in his footsteps. Sylvie is considered to be Nerval's prose masterpiece: it is a semi-autobiographical tale of a man haunted by the memory of three women in his life, all of whom seem to blend together. The story opens with the narrator at the theatre, where he is enamored by an actress named Aurélie. He is suddenly reminded of a memory from childhood and experiences a flashback - he remembers a festival where he danced with a local girl named Sylvie, but was entranced by Adrienne, a young woman whose resemblance to Aurélie is what brings on the flashback. Adrienne ultimately becomes a nun and is out of his love life, so the young man returns to Sylvie several years later and spends time with her. One day, as they pass by a monastery, the narrator mentions Adrienne, much to Sylvie's dismay. The narrator returns to Paris and … and we won’t spoil the story for you, but it is worth the read. The covers are full-tooled blue morocco, with five raised bands, six gilt-ruled compartments with gilt lettering and “Paris 1886” at the heel of the spine, a decorative gilt-fillet border with floral devices and inner gilt-fillet borders on the front cover, a beautifully gilt-decorated front paste-down with the name of the binder - “Chambolle- Duru” - in gilt above the double-fillet borders at the bottom of the paste-down, a gray- blue silk moire front-free endpaper, followed by marbled endpapers, some blank endpapers, then the original light gray wrapper that adorned the front of the story, the half-title, the limitation page, an illustrated frontispiece by E. Redaux, the title page, then a 24-page preface by Ludovic Halevy (i - xxiv), followed by 134 pages of text and a leaf near the end with a Table of all the chapter titles, and the original light gray wrapper at the rear with a list of books by Claritie, Musset, Gautier, and Hamilton being prepared for publication, and all the edges are gilt. The book is in the original French, it is illustrated with beautiful engravings for each chapter, and it comes in a decorated slipcase by Chambolle-Duru as well. Chambolle-Duru was a French binding house run by René Victor Chambolle (1834 - 1898) and Hippolyte Duru (1803 - 1884). Chambolle-Duru bindings are expensive, and that’s what makes this book so remarkable. They start at $2000 to $3000 apiece and run up to $95,000 because of the quality of the bindings, and the higher value ones are usually bindings that covered 15th and 16th century books - books from the 1500’s and 1600’s. The book is 12mo. and measures 7 x 4 3/4 in. wide, and it is in very good condition. The binding is tight and the text and margins are very clean, as are the engravings, there are small spots of rubbing at the end of a couple of raised bands, and an interesting book written by an interesting author who died so young, in an elegant high-quality binding by and slipcase by Chambolle-Duru, one of the greatest of French binders in the nineteenth century. #2657