ROSTAND (Edmond).

Lot 108
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Estimation :
1200 - 1500 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 1 264EUR
ROSTAND (Edmond).
Chantecler. Play in four acts, in verse. Paris, Librairie Charpentier et Fasquelle, 1910. In-8, paperback, brown leather cover, decorated with an embossed composition by Lalique, in a lemon leather jacket with small cover and modern case. First edition of this animal play first performed at the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre on 7 February 1910, with Lucien Guitry in the title role. The writing of this play was painful for Edmond Rostand, who took eight years to complete it. Printed on japon impérial, under a beautiful embossed cover by René Lalique, the edition is adorned with a coloured headband by Edmond Rostand on the false-title. Nominative copy, printed for the actor Dauchy, interpreter of the Peacock, initialed with the publisher's initials. Two autograph letters about the genesis of Chantecler and testifying to the difficulties experienced by Rostand in writing his play are attached. These letters are addressed to Constant Coquelin, Rostand's favourite actor (who died at the beginning of the rehearsals, it was his son, Jean Coquelin, who played the dog Patou): - A letter from Rosemonde Rostand, undated but written at the beginning of 1904 (8 pages and a half in-12 on mourning paper headed by Etchegorria in Cambo-les-Bains). Madame Rostand is worried about the state of her husband's health and the progress of Chantecler: "Dear friend, it is desperate. There is no need to hide it, we are in the middle of one of those crises of acute neurasthenia, of incomprehensible discouragement and anguish which had already occurred during Cyrano and L'Aiglon, if not stopping things completely, at least delaying them in a desolate way. - A letter from Edmond Rostand, dated Cambo, November 1904 (one page in-8); the author, ill and plagued by doubts, wishes to stop everything: I know that you have written to my wife to insist again on my play. I don't want to do this play. I have allowed myself to be influenced and persuaded for too long, and I have wasted the best time of my life on a job I don't like [...]. Today, I am freeing myself in a definitive way; I will no longer open any letter or newspaper so as not to be influenced by anything, and I will regain my freedom and my life. No, I will not give you, at any date, this comedy which I do not want to finish, because it would be monstrous that for the sake of money, I should have a poem written against my will performed [...].
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