WWD – Date Set for Second Auction of Pierre Bergé’s Rare Books

BOOKISH TYPE: The date for a second auction in a series of sales casting off Pierre Bergé’s personal library has been set. The sale is to take place on Nov. 8 and 9 at Paris’ auction house Hôtel Drouot. Five subsequent sales are to follow. The first auction of 182 lots spanning 600 years had raised $12.8 million in December 2015, as reported.

The new sale — dedicated to 19th-century literary Europe from 1780 until 1900 — boasts around 380 lots, including manuscripts of the Marquis de Sade, Gustave Flaubert, Stéphane Mallarmé, and a rare copy of Stendhal’s “Promenades dans Rome” annotated by the author. It also includes copies that were sent by such authors as Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo and Flaubert to fellow authors’ attention, as well as works in their original languages by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Poe and Karl Marx.

The auction is to be led by Pierre Bergé & Associés in conjunction with Sotheby’s auction house, assisted by experts Stéphane Clavreuil and Benoît Forgeot.

Bergé began his time in Paris as a dealer in antiquarian books. His life was threaded with literary and artistic companionships, starting with Jean Giono, Jean Cocteau and Bernard Buffet before his encounter with Yves Saint Laurent.

The catalogue is due out in September. A selection of lots is to go display in October and early November  in Brussels, London and Paris.

Source : WWD