BLANC (Louis). - Lot 53

BLANC (Louis). Born in Madrid. 1811-1882. Historian and politician. Member of the provisional government of the Second Republic (1848). L.A.S. "Louis Blanc" to "Mon cher Escudier" (Léon Escudier éditeur à Paris). London (England), December 12, 1848. 3 pp. 1/2 in-8. Stamped envelope. AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF LOUIS BLANC'S LONDON LEXILY? after the insurrectionary days of June 1848, Louis Blanc was forced to leave France for Belgium, then England, which would become his land of exile...Louis Blanc tried to solve certain publishing problems that were not to his advantage: ...there was a first mistake made: the one-franc edition. What is certain is that the figure of ten thousand copies is well below my expectations. Be that as it may, and since you wish to continue this publication, the proposal made to me in the name of MMr Garnier will remain as null and void...He authorizes him to conclude ...with Mr Parmentier the affair relating to the Organization of Work..., and is astonished not to have received his due, ...There is a clause in the treaty you sent me that I don't quite understand. It states that in the event of new editions, I will always give you preference, on the terms and conditions stipulated for the present edition...He considers these conditions inadmissible...I couldn't even sell, for example, the property of my book, if need be. See if there isn't a drafting defect here...As for the brochure on the presidency, ...I think I told you it was a little gift I intended to give to a workers' association. Incidentally, it's not a formal work, but just a few pages (...). I would gladly have sent it to you, had I not found myself bound by the reply I made to an earlier request. This request was addressed to me by a friend, for a social bookshop, annexed to the guilds. I'm not sure if it's the same thing as the typographers' society, and I have reason to believe that it isn't, from what I've been told since (...). What a misfortune to be obliged to do business by correspondence! But my exile will not be eternal, thank God!... You asked me for my biography. I sent you two English newspapers, the Spirit of the Age and the Britannia: did you receive them? The Spirit of the Age is the most democratic newspaper in this country; the Britannia is a Tory [conservative] newspaper, ultra Tory rather: they are the two extremes...After the Revolution of February 1848, Louis Blanc became a member of the Provisional Government of the Second Republic. However, having failed to obtain a Ministry of Labor, he was put in charge of a workers' commission, with no budget and no real power. He tried to implement his ideas: associations, reconciliations between employers and employees, proposed bills. But following the Conservatives' success in April 1848, Blanc found himself dismissed from the government for his socialist ideas. Suspected of having taken part in the riots of June 1848, he was forced into exile in England until 1870, when the Second Empire came to an end. Louis Blanc's book, Organisation du travail, was first published in 1839. In it, the author proposed substituting the organization of work and association for unbridled capitalist competition, using the "force of the democratically constituted state"; a thesis that had a considerable impact. In successive editions, Louis Blanc added a second part devoted to literary property, in which he discusses Lamartine's proposal for copyright.