£650.00
An 1845 Paris edition of Corinne, ou l’Italie, complete with an engraved portrait and distinguished provenance from the library of Eugene Augustus Hoffman.
Contemporary mottled calf, gilt-ruled spine; engraved frontispiece portrait.
Wear to extremities; internally clean; bookplate and inscriptions of Rev. Eugene Augustus Hoffman.
Year: 1845
Publisher: Librairie de Firmin Didot Frères, Paris
Signed: Signed & Inscribed
A mid-nineteenth-century Paris printing of Corinne, ou l’Italie, Madame de Staël’s celebrated novel of genius, exile, and cultural identity. First published in 1807, the work became one of the defining literary statements of European Romanticism, blending travel, philosophy, and psychological portraiture through the figure of Corinne, a gifted woman negotiating art, love, and society.
This copy carries particularly attractive provenance. It comes from the library of the Reverend Eugene Augustus Hoffman of New York, with both his engraved bookplate and manuscript ownership inscription dated May 1845. Hoffman was a prominent American clergyman and intellectual, and his library associations add depth and transatlantic context to the volume’s history.
Complete with the engraved portrait of Madame de Staël, the book presents as a dignified and historically resonant survivor.
Corinne stands as one of the most influential novels of the Romantic period and a landmark in women’s literary history. De Staël’s exploration of national character, creativity, and female intellect shaped European literary culture for decades. Copies with identifiable nineteenth-century scholarly provenance add an additional layer of historical interest for collectors.
