FLAUBERT Gustave Salammbô.

Monod, I, 4698 ; Talvart & Place, VI, 6, N.

A copy on Rives vellum, no. 379.

For Flaubert, the Orient was not merely a fashionable trend; he had been dreaming of it since his adolescence: «  Je rêvais de lointains voyages dans les contrées du sud; je voyais l’Orient et ses sables immenses, ses palais que foulent les chameaux et leurs clochettes d’airain Â»  (Flaubert, Mémoires d’un fou, Novembre et autres textes de jeunesse, Flammarion, , 1991, p. 275.)

He undertook two journeys to the East: the first from October 1849 to June 1850, during which he travelled to Egypt, then to Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus. The second journey, undertaken primarily for the writing of Salammbô, took place from April to June 1858, during which Flaubert travelled through Algeria and Tunisia.

In *Salammbô*, which recounts the War of the Mercenaries, Flaubert depicts an idealised but not mystical Orient; he aims for a historical, violent and sensual portrayal.

This edition is illustrated by Pierre Noël, a 20th-century illustrator and painter who was appointed official painter to the Navy in 1944.

Provenance: François Chrétien (bookplate)

A fine copy.