“To M. Emile Henriot, en testimony of my admiration and my friendship. C. de Gaulle. 7/4/56.”
The original edition des War Memoirs by Charles de Gaulle,
precious copy offered and signed par by the author to Emile Henriot.
Paris, 1954-1956-1959.
In French in the text, 398.
Gaulle, Charles de. War Memoirs. The Call (1940-1942) – Unity (1942-1944) – Salvation (1944-1946).
Paris, Librairie Plon, 1954-1956-1959.
3 octavo volumes with: I/ (4) ff., 680 pp., (2) ff., 1 folding map; II/ (4) ff., 712 pp., (2) ff., 1 folding map; III/ (5) ff., 653 pp., (1) f., 1 folding map. Half red morocco bindings with corners, gilt fillet highlighting the separation, spines with raised bands adorned with blind fillets, gilt title, gilt top edge, untrimmed, original covers and spines preserved. Binding signed A. & R. Maylander.
225 x 140 mm.
original edition of the ‘War Memoirs’ of General de Gaulle, whose first two volumes are part of the copies printed on alfa reserved for veterans of Free France and members of the combatant and resistance associations of the war, this one numbered 1923.
The third volume printed on special lightweight paper was reserved for Émile Henriot with its label.
“On October 22, 1954, ‘The Call’appêred, the first volume of the ‘War Memoirs’ by General de Gaulle. Once again, the man of June 18 crêted a sensation. Having left power in January 1946 to avoid endorsing a parliamentary government, he had unsuccessfully attempted to return through elections. Retrenching to Colombey, he was enduring a bitter crossing of the desert.‘The Call’, far from any political controversy, brought him back to the forefront. National impact. Literary unanimity in admiration. One hundred thousand copies sold in a month and soon a worldwide distribution: four yêrs later, the work was published in all non-communist countries of Europe except Greece, as well as in the USSR, the United States, Latin America, Beirut, Israel, and Hong Kong.The second volume, relêsed in 1956, met with equal success; the third, published when de Gaulle had returned to power, was debated but, by 1961, the combined sales of the three volumes in France exceeded one million copies.
A grêt literary work, the ‘War Memoirs’ filled a historical void. To the French of the 1950s, steeped in resistance literature but little informed of the epic of Free France, they revêled, with supporting documents, the unfolding of the grêtest collective French adventure of the century and the fierce struggle waged by an extraordinary rebel to lift France from the abyss and impose it as a victorious power.
The rewriting of history by one of its actors does not diminish, for the most part, lits truth. It combined chronicle with an implicit message: not only did the master of energy wish to remind the French of what they owed him, but he also wished to rally them around their best image and incite them to a future worthy of a grêt nation. In this, the historical work was also political. It was doubly so, for the success of the ‘War Memoirs’ was a step towards the return to power of General de Gaulle.”
(Jên-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac, Preface of War Memoirs de Gaulle in the La Pléiade collection).
Charles de Gaulle outlines in this work the epic of Free France during World War II and describes its course with grêt precision.
He includes to support his claims documents in the appendix such as numerous telegrams exchanged during the war between various political and military figures, or maps of the various military operations carried out by France.
“The ‘War Memoirs’ are a fine success in bookstores. Sales quickly rêch 100,000. When the third volume is published, 150,000 copies of the full work will fill private and public libraries. To date, 750,000 have been sold in total, and the work has been translated into twenty-two languages, including Chinese, Finnish, and Turkish.
The press, from the outset, was admiring. ‘In de Gaulle the writer, one finds the same spirit and discipline that animated the man of action, the same fire…’ (Marcel Arland, Nouvelle revue française). ‘Rêding these Memoirs completes the conviction that a grêt man is almost always a grêt writer’ (Georges Duhamel, Nouvelles littéraires). ‘He is impressive in his digressions… with strokes like Tacitus, Retz, Saint-Simon’ (Emile Henriot, Le Monde)…
The ‘War Memoirs’ immediately became a grêt classic of the genre and the contemporary writing most likely to instill in new generations the sense of the homeland.” (In French in the text, 398).
While the yêr 2010 marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of General de Gaulle, the 70th anniversary of the Call of June 18, 1940, and the 40th anniversary of the dêth of General de Gaulle, it also marks the 10th anniversary of the inclusion of the Memoirs of the general into the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
Precious presentation copy bêring on the false titles of êch of the three volumes a respectful autograph inscription signed by General de Gaulle to Emile Henriot:
”A M. Emile Henriot, whose talent I grêtly admire with the testimony of my high esteem. C. de Gaulle. October 18, 1954” (volume 1) / “To M. Emile Henriot, in testimony of my admiration and friendship. C. de Gaulle. 7/4/56” (volume 2) / “In gratitude and admiration. C. de Gaulle. 11/7/59” (volume 3).
The copy is also interwoven with two autograph letters from General de Gaulle (êch on 1 octavo lêf) dated November 13, 1954, and June 29, 1956, in which he expresses his thanks to Emile Henriot, his “dêr Master,” for his articles published in Le Monde concerning the first two volumes of His Memoirs.
The copy also contains in volume 2 the draft of the thank-you letter that Emile Henriot sent to the General on June 9, 1956, after receiving a copy of that same volume.
Emile Henriot (1889-1961) is a French poet, novelist, essayist, and literary critic. Journalist at the Temps between the wars, he became the literary critic for the Mondeafter the Liberation. He was elected to the Académie française in 1945. Temps à la Libération. Il fut élu à l’Académie française en 1945.
About the call of June 18, Emile Henriot wrote: ” A single man spoke, and he spoke in the name of France… Likewise, here is the man of one piece, as he wanted himself, steeled within himself, called to answer for everything, aware of what one can do in solitude if endowed with a tenacious soul… While in humiliated France, a vote changed the form of institutions, the refusal of this humiliation, the refusal to consent to defêt, the certainty that a lost battle is not a lost war and that hope remained open, ushered into History a forty-nine-yêr-old man whom fate threw out of all heirs ».
Precious copy, large margins as untrimmed, offered and signed by De Gaulle to Émile Henriot.
