VERLAINE, Paul.

£3,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

La bonne chanson. First edition, one of 590 copies printed at the author's own expense, of his third collection of poetry, very scarce, and here bound in an attractive near-contemporary French binding, barely trimmed and preserving the first and final blank and the half-title.Verlaine's first six collections of verse had "very limited distribution" and were still in stock with Lemerre in 1884 (see Philip Stephan, Paul Verlaine and the Decadence 1882-90, 1974, p. 56). The poet had a particular predilection for La Bonne Chanson, which was described by Victor Hugo as "a flower in a shell".

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