MUSSET (Alfred de), Short Stories. - Lot 249

MUSSET (Alfred de), Short Stories. Paris, Charpentier, Bookseller and Publisher, 1861. In-12, elegant contemporary binding in red half-maroquin with corner pieces, spine finely decorated and gilt, gilt head. A collection of short stories and prose narratives by Alfred de Musset, bringing together several of the texts most representative of his talent as a storyteller: *Les Deux Maîtresses*, *Emmeline*, *Le Fils du Titien*, *Frédéric et Bernerette*, *Croisilles*, and *Margot*. These works, composed at different stages of his career, offer a remarkable panorama of his literary and emotional world. While posterity has primarily remembered him as a poet and playwright, Musset reveals himself in these stories as a particularly subtle observer of human passions. Love, disillusionment, chance encounters, the illusions of youth, and the wounds of the heart form the essential fabric of these short stories, treated with that unique blend of grace, emotion, and irony that characterizes his entire body of work. Several of these texts rank among the finest achievements of French Romantic prose. *Frédéric and Bernerette, or The Two Mistresses* delicately explores the themes of thwarted love and the fickleness of feelings, while *The Son of Titian* reflects Musset’s fondness for Italy—a land of beauty, art, and passion that served as a major source of his inspiration. Published in the Charpentier collection, this volume contributed to the dissemination of Musset’s complete works among the cultured public of the Second Empire. It illustrates the diversity of a writer capable of excelling in poetry, theater, and psychological fiction alike. A beautiful copy in red half-maroquin with period corners, the ribbed spine elegantly decorated with gilt fillets and fleurons, perfectly matching the other volumes of Musset’s works. A few slight signs of wear on the binding; the interior is well preserved. An essential collection for appreciating Musset’s art of storytelling, in which the themes of love, youth, and romantic melancholy are expressed with rare delicacy.