Odes

Paris: Persan, 1823. Very Good. Paris: Persan, 1823. "Second Édition, Augmentée de deux odes nouvelles." 12mo (16.5cm.); later 19th-century black morocco over marbled boards, gilt-tooled spine, marbled endpapers, original blue printed wrappers reinforced with wastepaper bound in, publisher's advertisements present; ix,[10]-122[but 222]pp. Leather joints and corners a bit rubbed, brief paper flaw to front pastedown from previously removed bookplate, later (1910 and 1928) ink and pencil gift inscriptions to front flyleaf, light foxing throughout textblock, else Very Good and sound overall.

Second, augmented edition of Hugo's first separately published book, a collection of odes penned in his late teens and early twenties, distinctly displaying his "monarchical ideas and religious beliefs," "blasting...the satanic 'Buonaparte,'" and envisioning God sending "the entire eighteenth century tumbling into the eternal abyss" (Graham Robb, "Victor Hugo" (1999), p. 100). As for the two new poems added to this edition, "slavish tributes to Louis XVII and Jehovah" (ibid). Though the first edition sold well (1500 copies in four months), by 1827 Hugo had come to learn that in order to achieve a commercially viable literary career he would have to shed his youthful royalist and religious conservatism and embrace the new generation's liberalism (Robb, p. 126). This edition slightly more uncommon than the rare first both in commerce and institutionally, OCLC noting three copies in North America as of January, 2021, at Indiana U., Eastern Kentucky, and Harvard.