Poems fetch $286,000

Press, 23 March 1985, Page 14

Poems fetch $286,000

NZPA-Reuter Paris A first edition of “Les Fleurs du Mai," by Charles Baudelaire, fetched 1,300,009 francs ($286,600) at an auction of rare nineteenth century books. The slim red volume of poetry, dedicated on the flyleaf to Baudelaire’s close friend, the painter Eugene Delacroix, was bought by Pierre Beres, a Parisian rare book dealer.

Experts attending the sale said Baudelaire’s dedication “with eternal admiration,” handwritten in 1857, had probably increased the value of the

book by a factor of 10. The sale by the Paris auction house, Ader Picard Tajan, of 108 books owned by Jacques Guerin, a veteran private collector, raised 12,164,500 francs ($2.68 milion.) A rare two-volume edition of “Lelia,” by George Sand, dedicated in her own hand to her lover, Alfred de Musset, was sold for 830,000 francs ($183,000.)

The sale also included books by Victor Hugo, Flaubert, Stendhal, Balzac, and other writers, many of them in editions dedicated by the authors.