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subject and essayist, between the author of The Garden and Damon the Mower and the writer, gardener, and author of The Land . See Cross & Ravenscrift-Hulme A.18. £27,500 [124311] 128 [SAND, George, pseud.] Manuscript fragment from “Sur la dernière publication de M. Lamennais”. [Published in La Revue Indépendante , 10 March 1843, pp. 105–118.] [1843] 2 leaves, disbound, closely written in French in black ink on verso only. Faint glue residue to second leaf recto; in excellent condition. Two pages of manuscript in Sand’s own hand, with deletions, inser- tions, and corrections, for her article in the March issue of the jour- nal La Revue Indépendante— the left-wing journal Sand (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, 1804–1876) had co-founded in 1841. In her ar- ticle, titled “Sur la dernière publication de M. Lamennais” (10 March 1843, pp. 105–118), Sand defends Félicité de Lamennais’s 1843 work, Amschaspands et Darvands , a satire of the rule of money and evil in phil- osophical tales involving good and evil spirits, in which Lamennais espoused popular sovereignty and attacked contemporary society and the public authorities. Sand’s cunningly tongue-in-cheek de- fence rigorously demolishes an excoriating review of Amschaspands et Darvands that had been published anonymously in the then-famous Journal des Débats Politiques et Littéraires . Sand mercilessly sheds light on the author’s cowardice, contradictions, and sly writing tricks. Sand was strongly influenced by Lamennais (1782–1854), one of the foremost Catholic intellectuals of Restoration France, the first proponent of liberal Catholicism, and an early advocate of social Ca- tholicism who eventually broke with the Church in 1836. Following his excommunication and year in prison in 1841, Lamennais devoted himself to socialist-democratic causes. The present excerpt includes Sand’s most fervently admiring defense of Lamennais in the whole article: “his mission was to destroy everything that was awry in the previous [religion]: he did it according to his strengths and his lights;—to preserve, to revive all that was truly pure, truly evangelic, he [did it with all his soul.]” Sand also addresses his term in jail, writ- ing: “he was old, weak, sickly: they rejoiced, thinking that they were
going to kill him, and that from the jail, where they locked him up, they would soon see only a shadow, a fallen spirit, an extinct voice, a power annihilated. And yet he still speaks, he speaks louder than ever. They thought they were dealing with a timid child who breaks with punishment, who one incapacitates with fear. The pedants! They look at each other now confused, terrified, and wonder what divine spark animates this frail body, this tenacious soul.” £975 [118615] 129 SANDES, Flora. The Autobiography of a Woman Soldier. A Brief Record of Adventure with the Serbian Army 1916– 1919. London: H. F. & G. Witherby, 1927 Octavo. Original blue cloth, title gilt to spine, plain endpapers. With the pictorial dust jacket. Half-tone portrait frontispiece, 7 similar plates. Pub- lisher’s sticker with small sheep device to front pastedown. Light shelf wear to binding and dust jacket, text block a little browned. A very good copy in the bright dust jacket. first edition of this compelling story, “the only British woman to serve in uniform, in combat, as an enlisted soldier in World War One” (Little). At the beginning of the war Sandes had tried to enlist with the British Voluntary Aid Service but was rejected, so went to Serbia, where she began as a nurse but soon became an active sol- dier, fighting on the front line, getting wounded twice and, finally, being awarded the “Kara George star—the highest medal awarded to non-commissioned officers—for her bravery during the Serbian retreat into Albania” ( ODNB ). After the war, in which “she had lived in the trenches with her comrades, shared their food, slept under- neath their overcoats, [and] divided her last cigarettes and crusts of bread with them” ( ODNB ), Sandes found it hard to readjust to life as a civilian: “she felt a permanent incapacity to settle down to an- ything. She tried her hand at driving Belgrade’s first taxi cab, wrote an autobiography, acquired a speed-boat licence, taught English, and acted as a matron to a dancing troupe in Paris” ( ODNB ). Little, Alan, “A Forgotten Soldier on a Forgotten Front”, BBC News, 28 September 2018; Miller, Louise, A Fine Brother: The Life of Captain Flora Sandes , Alma Books, 2012. £500 [129955]
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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