On 7 October, Christie's will present 75 exceptional lots (for a total estimate of €1 million or £890,000), including Marcel Proust's missives, work by Saint-Exupéry, and an edition of Balzac's Unknown Masterpiece. The dispersion of Proust's 16 letters will be auctioned off as we celebrate the centenary of author’s win of the Goncourt Prize.
Written by the famous author Marcel Proust for the attention of his friend René Blum, general secretary of the daily Gil Blas, the 16 letters date from 1913 to 1916 and total more than 90 pages. The set is estimated between €200,000 and €300,000 (£177,100-265,700), and shows how the writer campaigned to be published and received the Goncourt prize. René Blum had valuable contacts in the world of publishing, and in his first letter of February 1913, Proust asked him to submit Swann's Way, the first of the 7 volumes of In Search of Lost Time, to the publisher Bernard Grasset for publishing.
Marcel Proust wanted his novel to be published without being altered, and on his own terms. To do so, he proposed to pay for the publishing himself: "If M. Grasset publishes the book at his expense, he will read it, make me wait, propose changes, make small volumes, etc. ... and will be right from the point of view of success. But I am rather looking for the clear presentation of my work. What I want is that in eight days is for you to tell me, this is a concluded affair, your book will appear on such date. And this is possible only by paying for the publication.”
The writer's ambition to win a literary prize was manifested even before the publication of the book, while the publishing contract was not yet signed. His friend managed to convince Grasset to publish the first volume, and Proust, in his subsequent letters, does not fail to express his rebirth. He also tries to advertise his book by soliciting friends close to his literary circle, such as Jean Cocteau, Lucien Daudet, or Louis de Robert, and Blum again to get a notice in the Gil Blas: "Would it not be possible that Gil Blas gives a large extract of the beautiful article that Jacques Blanche devotes to me in the Echo of Paris this morning (in Wednesday's Echo)."
The novel draws the attention of Gallimard's publishing house, the NRF, and Proust tries to get rid of his contractual obligations to Grasset through his friend Blum. In 1917, Gaston Gallimard bought 200 copies of Swann’s Way from Grasset, before putting it on a cover of the NRF and marking it for sale. On 10 December 1919, Marcel Proust won the 17th Goncourt prize for In the Shadow of the Young Girls in Flower, which had been published by Gallimard after the war alongside the first volume of the research a few months earlier. An original copy of In the Shadow of the Young Girls in Flower, including an autograph consignment to the poet and critic Henri Ghéon will also be offered in the sale (estimate €8,000 to €12,000 or £7,086-10,600).
The catalogue will also include a major edition of Balzac's Unknown Masterpiece illustrated with 12 etchings by Picasso, estimated between €40,000 and €60,000 (£35,400-53,100), as well as a collection of original drawings by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, estimated at €40,000-50,000 (£35,400-44,200).
