Signé ; Georges Courteline - Le train de 8h47 [L.A.S + Envoi — Illustré par Carlègle-Relié maroquin-Ex Vélin-Provenance] - 1917

Georges Courteline

The 8:47 train

Paris, Société littéraire de France, 1917, octavo (22 x 14 cm) of 212 pp

Numbered copy on Vélin

Filled with an autograph note on blue paper and enriched with a dedication from the author to René Benjamin, writer, journalist, lecturer: "I do not know how to thank you, my dear Benjamin, this is far too good for me, and you are a thousand times too kind. Yours sincerely; Courteline."

René Benjamin is the author of a series of studies of mores on the Palace of Justice, the Sorbonne, the Hôtel des Ventes. His novel, Gaspard, won the Goncourt Prize in 1915. He wrote it at Tours hospital, where he stayed for several months after being seriously wounded in 1914. He has had several plays staged in the theatre and has contributed portraits with works devoted to Antoine, Barrès, Balzac, Maurras, Sacha Guitry and Molière. His Prodigious Life of Honoré de Balzac (1925) launched the famous in its time collection, the "Roman des grandes existences" of the Plon books. An ally of Maurras and Léon Daudet, he supported Marshal Pétain during the German occupation. He had entered the Académie Goncourt in 1938, but from 1944, as La Varende preferred to resign, he was no longer summoned to Académie lunches, just like Jean Ajalbert and Sacha Guitry.

Summary: The fourteen months he spent among the garance-colored trousers during his military service were decisive for his work. Among these merry fellows, he found material for several works of pleasantly ferocious scrutiny of the sublime absurdities of life in the barracks. There is a truth that pierces the caricature in the portraits of Captain Hurluret, Adjudant Flick, Croquebolle and La Guillaumette. Georges Courteline, a great humorist, was also a great moralist.

Half morocco binding with corners and raised bands, title and author in gilt, head gilt, covers and spine preserved, date at the foot.