DUMAS (A.) : Un Gil Blas en Californie. Paris, Cadot, 1852. - Lot 157

Lot 157
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DUMAS (A.) : Un Gil Blas en Californie. Paris, Cadot, 1852. - Lot 157
DUMAS (A.) : Un Gil Blas en Californie. Paris, Cadot, 1852. 2 vols. in-8 black half-basane of the period, smooth spine decorated, 2ff, 317 pp., 1ff - 2ff, 295 pp., 1ff. (small tear at the head of volume 2, corners rubbed, foxing and qq very slight wetness). First edition, rare. Alexandre Dumas, who never crossed the Atlantic, restores a rather plausible America, without extreme violence. For the historical documentation he openly relies on the work of Gabriel (?) Ferry, author of a Description de la Nouvelle-Californie, in particular to evoke the fierce fights between Mexico and the United States for the possession of this territory, before the latter acquired it for the sum of fifteen million dollars. Dumas did not imagine the creation of Silicon Valley, but in the conclusion of the story he predicts that "the real wealth in California will be in the future, agriculture and commerce. The search for gold, like any manual trade, will feed its man, and that is all. Published in 1852 by Cadot, publisher in Paris, Un Gil Blas en Californie was reprinted the same year by the Belgian publisher Méline, Cans et Cie. and serialized in the newspaper Le Siècle, under the more explicit title of Californie : un an sur les bords du San Joaquin et du Sacramento. At the beginning of the first chapter Dumas specifies in a note that "the author thought it necessary to give the floor to the traveller whose adventures he recounts. The pronoun "I" represents here, not the historian, but the hero of this curious story". It is undoubtedly Bénédict Revoil, who translated R. Gordon-Cumming's A lion hunter in South Africa, published by Alexandre Dumas in 1860 under the title La vie au désert. Having left for the United States in 1842, Revoil stayed there for nine years. Beautiful copy in good period binding.
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