Sainte-Beuve - Causeries du lundi - 1870

Causeries du lundi, by Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Complete in 15 volumes.

The Monday Conversations are a series of literary chronics and critiques published by Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869), one of the great French literary critics of the 19th century. Every Monday, Sainte-Beuve published in the press – notably in Le Constitutionnel and then Le Moniteur universel – an article devoted to a writer, a thinker, or a historical figure. These weekly pieces were later collected into volumes, forming a monumental 15-volume work published between 1851 and 1862.

In them, Sainte-Beuve paints carefully researched literary portraits, blending analysis of the work with study of the author’s personality. He is famous for his method of linking the man and the work, a point later vigorously contested by Proust in Contre Sainte-Beuve. These Causeries are an indispensable reference for the history of French literature, covering authors from Corneille to Chateaubriand, including Molière, Racine, and Montaigne.

S.d. (circa 1865), 12 x 19 cm, about 460 pages per volume. Binding: burgundy half-leather, boards covered in percaline, spine with four raised bands and gilt compartments, with the title, author and volume number gilt. The bindings are rubbed, some with stains, corners worn, joints cracked (partially). There is loss at the lower headcap of volumes 1 and 4. Two pages are detached in volume 11. There is an old water stain in the lower right corner of the first cover and the first 40 pages of volume 15, as well as a water stain on the first cover and all pages of volume 13, with pronounced waviness (see photo).