Gustave Flaubert - Salammbô [édition originale] - 1863

Original edition, first printing copy containing the uncorrected errors: page 5 'effraya' instead of 'effrayèrent' and page 251 'Scissites' instead of 'Syssites'.

Antique binding, half brown morocco, ornamented spine with raised bands, title and author in gilt tooling. Marbled edges. Worn spine, rubbing at the headbands and edges of the boards, pierced corners. Foxing, yellow stain in the outer margin of pages 85-90.

Summary: Salammbô, the priestess of Tanit, bewitches the mercenary leaders, Mathô and Narr'Havas, during a banquet held in Hamilcar's gardens. But soon, the mercenaries, furious at not having received their pay, revolt against Carthage and trigger a long and merciless war. Mathô manages to enter the temple of Tanit and steal the zaïmph, the sacred veil, which demoralizes the Carthaginians; Salammbô will have to go to Mathô's tent and seduce him to recover the precious talisman. But at the end of a bloody confrontation, all the protagonists die in more or less atrocious conditions, including Salammbô, poisoned for having touched the sacred veil of the goddess.
Flaubert was strongly opposed to any illustration of his novel, anxious not to let definitive plastic representations diminish and freeze an imaginary space that he had wanted to be sumptuous, erotic, refined and barbaric at the same time.

Author: Gustave Flaubert
Salammbô
Edition: Paris, Michel Lévy frères 1863
In-8 (23 x 15 cm); 474 pages, 1 frontispiece.