De L'Allemagne, par Mme La Baronne de Staël Holstein

Paris: H. Nicolle, à la Libraire Stéréotype, Rue de Seine, N, 12. 1810. Ré-imprimé par John Murray, Albemarle-Street, Londres. [Volume II: De l'Imprimerie de R. Taylor et Co. Shoe-lane, Londres; volume III: De l'Imprimerie de Cox et Baylis, Great Queen-street, Lincoln's Inn-fields, Londres], 1813. Second (i.e., first available) edition, 3 volumes, 8vo, pp. xxi, [3], 360; [6], 399, [1]; [8], 416; original blue paper-covered boards, brown paper shelfback, printed paper labels on spine; light cracking and wear but generally very good and sound. Ownership signature of "Cambusmore" on the title pages. This is the first edition to reach the public of Madame de Staël's most important work which introduced German literature, especially the Romantic poets, to French readers, and greatly influenced French writers throughout the 19th century. The book was first printed in Paris in 1810, but the entire edition, except for three proof copies ending with page 240 of the third volume was seized and destroyed on the orders of Napoleon who misunderstood it as a political work. In her preface to this London edition - the "de facto" first edition - De Staël wrote about the fate of her book and her expulsion from France. She explains the circumstances of the suppression: although the text had already been submitted and passed after certain excisions, the minister of police had all 10,000 copies destroyed on the grounds that the book was "un-French." Her impressions are based on two journeys through Germany in 1803-04 to Weimar and Berlin, and in 1807-08 to Munich and Vienna. The most important second part offers an almost complete literary history of the time of Goethe and Schiller, but the young romantic poets were especially close to her heart. No doubt she was influenced there by her travel companion August Wilhelm von Schlegel.