“L’ACTION ET L’AMOUR”: DUMAS’ WORKS ONE OF 1000 SETS, BEAUTIFULLY BOUND

DUMAS, Alexandre. The Works. Boston: Dana Estes, circa 1903. Forty-seven volumes. Octavo, contemporary full mottled calf, elaborately gilt-decorated spines and boards with white morocco floral onlays, top edges gilt, uncut. $15,000.

Edition de Médici, number 395 of 1000 sets in English of the novels of Dumas pere, “the greatest French romantic novelist” (Dolbow, 98), including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, with engraved illustrations in each volume (including eight hand-colored frontispieces), beautifully bound.

After two decades as a popular playwright, Dumas turned to the novel around 1839, "with even greater success… He had great gifts of narrative and dialogue, a powerful imagination… [and] a genius for seizing the situations and characters that would best render historical atmosphere. He wrote with unflagging gusto and an instinctive conviction… that 'l'action et l'amour' were the essential things in life, hence in fiction" (Reid, 196). This set contains Dumas' finest novels: The Two Dianas (originally published 1846); The Page of the Duke of Savoy (1855); Marguerite de Valois (La Reine Margot, 1845), "with a fine description of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew" (Reid); La Dame de Monsoreau (1846); The Forty-Five (1848); The Three Musketeers (1844); Twenty Years After (1845); The Vicomte de Bragelonne (1848-50), "a picture of the court of Louis XIV" (Reid); The Chevalier d'Harmental (1842); The Regent's Daughter (1845); Olympe de Clèves (1852); Memoirs of a Physician (Joseph Balsamo, 1846-48); The Queen's Necklace (1849-50); Ange Pitou (1853); La Comtesse de Charny (1853-55); Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge (1845); The Last Vendee (1859); The Company of Jehu (1857); Ascanio (1843); The First Republic (1867); and The Count of Monte Cristo (1845-46); it also includes a three-volume collection of his Celebrated Crimes.

Fine condition.