“AH! BOURRIENNE, YOU ALSO WILL BE IMMORTAL!”

DE BOURRIENNE, Louis Antoine Fauvelet. Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte. By… His Private Secretary. To Which Are Now First Added, An Account of the Important Events of The Hundred Days, of Napoleon's Surrender to The English, And of His Residence And Death at St. Helena. London: Richard Bentley, 1836. Four volumes. Octavo, later three-quarter tan calf gilt over contemporary marbled boards, black and light blue morocco spine labels. $1800.

Expanded edition of de Bourrienne’s classic biography of Napoleon, with 26 plates, a facsimile of Napoleon’s abdication, and a folding map depicting the Battle of the Nile, in handsome calf-gilt bindings.

"Bourrienne, a French statesman, studied at the military school of Brienne, where he was on friendly terms with the young Napoleon. In 1797 he became Napoleon's secretary," an appointment which "continued during all the most brilliant part of Napoleon's career" and afforded him the intimacy upon which the Memoirs are based (CBD:189; preface). "The fame of Bourrienne rests, not upon his achievements or his original works… but upon his Memoirs" (Britannica). Frontispiece of Volume I dated 1835. First published in French in 1829; in English translation in 1830. Bookplates, small bookseller tickets, owner signature.

Scattered foxing to plates, text clean. Very handsomely bound.