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BELL, Currer [i.e. BRONTË, Charlotte]. Shirley et agnès grey.

Paris. Librairie de L. Hachette et cie., 1860.
12mo. Two volumes bound as one. [14], 406, [2]; [2], 370pp, [2]. Volume title pages (dated 1859) and conjugate half-titles loosely inserted. Uncut in original publisher's printed glassine covered powder-blue wrappers. A trifle rubbed and browned, spine sunned. occasional light marginal dampstaining, scattered spotting, several gatherings of Vol. II browned.
An early issue of the first edition in French, albeit abridged, of Charlotte Brontës (1816-1855) Shirley, paired with the equally truncated first translation of Agnes Grey, here erroneously attributed to Charlotte, though in actuality the work of her sister Anne Brontë.

Charlotte Brontë's second published work, Shirley is a social novel set against the backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry resulting from the industrial depression following the Napoleonic Wars.

An 'imitation' of Shirley had appeared four years earlier as a supplement to the newspaper Le National, but it was little more than an eighty-page digest. In the present edition, the text is cut by almost a third. The first full translation of the text into French did not appear until 1933.
£ 450.00 Antiquates Ref: 24241