Renee Mauperin (The Modern Library of the World's Best Books, ML 76)

New York: Boni and Liveright, Inc. / The Modern Library, 1919. Reprint. Small Hard Cover. Very Good/No Jacket. 0x0x0. Brodzky, Horace. 1919-25 printing of Toledano 076.1, binding style 2. Front edge along spine slightly abraded, minor damage to binding edge of p. 102. 234, [10] pp. Flexible brown boards, gilt titles and rules, Horace Brodzky illustrated endpapers. Introductory note on the authors by Emile Zola. "The Goncourt brothers were Edmond de Goncourt (1822-96) and Jules de Goncourt (1830-70), both French Naturalism writers. They formed a partnership that 'is possibly unique in literary history. Not only did they write all their books together, they did not spend more than a day apart in their adult lives, until they were finally parted by Jules's death in 1870'. Their career as writers began with an account of a sketching holiday together. They published books on aspects of eighteenth-century French art and society (eg Portraits intimes du XVIII siecle), dismissing the vulgarity of the Second Empire in favour of a more refined age. They also wrote the long Journal des Goncourt from 1851, which gives an interesting view of the literary and social life of their time. They are often not only caustic, but even spiteful. They published six novels, of which 'Germinie Lacerteux', 1865, was the fourth. It is based on the true case of their own maidservant, Rose Malingre, whose double life they had never suspected. Substituting pathology for psychology, their impressionist style had an intense and original precision.