Modern Books and Manuscripts

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Maurice Barrès (1893-1923) was a French novelist, journalist, and political ideologue who aligned himself with the anti-Semitic French nationalist movement of his period. Besides novels and political works, Barrès also produced several books of travel writing, including this volume from the Santo Domingo Collection: Un amateur d’âmes (1899), about traveling to Spain. It features illustrations drawn by the Swiss artist Louis Dunki and made into detailed woodcuts by a host of engravers.

This copy, one of fifty printed on fine paper, is particularly rich with provenance: first, two manuscript letters from Barrès are bound in with the preliminaries. The recipients are unclear, as both are addressed to “mon cher ami”, but the letters mention some of the same locations described in the book. Second, the front endpaper has attached to it four bookplates of previous owners, among them the book collectors Charles Hayoit and Raoul Simonson, and the literary critic Georges Grappe.

Maurice Barrès. Un amateur d’âmes. Paris: E. Fasquelle, 1899. FC9.B2747.899a.

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.