The Testimony of an Eye-Witness
The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-Witness
Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1877.
First English edition. Four volumes. 8vo. Original black publisher's cloth titled in gilt, with blind rules and vignettes to the covers. Ownership signature of Margaret Sewell, niece of Anna Sewell to each volume except the second. A near fine set, lightly worn to the joints and spine ends, with a little looseness to the upper hinges of the first two volumes, the second wanting the front free endpaper.
Written from exile in Brussels, begun following Hugo's arrival in Belgium in December 1851, it is his account of Napoleon III's takeover of France "written by a hand still hot from combat against the Coup d'Etat" (from Hugo's introductory note). The first published edition remained largely unchanged from Hugo's 1851 manuscript, and foreshadows the radical politics in his greatest work Les Misérables (1862), itself a retrospective history, though fictional, of an earlier political injustice.
The work was not published until after the fall of the royalist movement following the Crise du seize Mai in 1877, and bears the bold, two-sentence preface "This work is more than opportune; it is imperative. I publish it. V. H."
Stock ID: 37415
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