Charles Péguy - Notre Patrie [cartonnage Mario Prassinos] - 1945

Charles Péguy. Our Homeland

Gallimard, Paris, 1945, (18.1 x 12 cm), 128 pages, decorated publisher's binding.

Edition limited to 1000 copies on alfa paper from Papeteries Navarre, bound according to Mario Prassinos's design.

Beautiful copy in excellent condition, like new.


Charles Pierre Péguy, born on January 7, 1873, in Orléans (Loiret), and killed at the beginning of World War I on September 5, 1914, the first day of the First Battle of Ourcq, at Le Plessis-l'Évêque (Seine-et-Marne), was a French writer, poet, essayist, and reserve officer. He was also known by the pen names Pierre Baudouin, Jacques Daube, Pierre Deloire, and Jacques Lantier.

Engaged intellectual, Péguy was a libertarian socialist activist, anticlerical, and later a Dreyfusard. From 1908, he grew closer to Catholicism and composed mysteries and poems inspired by religion, such as The Tapestry of Our Lady (1913).

A disciple of the 'hussards noirs de la république' (an expression he coined), and a defender of the 'republican mystique,' he is the author of essays such as Notre Jeunesse (1910) and L'Argent (1913), where he expresses his social concerns and his rejection of the modern age and its conventions.

The novel, initially published in 1905, denounces the danger of Germany and the threat of war.
He already perceives the threat of a German invasion, a tragically confirmed intuition by history: Péguy died on September 5, 1914, killed during the First World War, becoming a symbol of the engaged intellectual and the heroic patriot.