Bookplanet: pricey French lit MS

French literary works fetch high prices at auction
By James Mackenzie

One of France's greatest private collections of manuscripts and rare editions from the giants of French literature fetched high prices late on Tuesday in the most closely watched auction of its type in years.

The sale of the private library of Pierre Beres, a legendary Paris book dealer, aroused unusual interest after he donated the manuscript of "La Chartreuse de Parme," one of the great novels of the 19th century, to the state earlier in the week.

The manuscript of the work by the novelist Stendhal, called in English "The Charterhouse of Parma," was considered the most significant French 19th century manuscript in private hands.

After 80 years in the book trade, Beres, 93, has accumulated an enormous collection of sought-after editions and signed albums that constituted a virtual history of French literature from the medieval poet Francois Villon onwards.

Inside the crowded Drouot auction hall in central Paris, the scene resembled an updated version of one of Balzac's novels of money and avarice as an auctioneer dispatched one treasure after another to a floor of impassive bidders.

The sale was expected to raise some 6 million euros ($7.56 million) but brought in about twice that much, not including fees, with the most expensive item, a 16th century collection of bird paintings fetching over $1.5 million.

Reportedly an avid reader of the death notices in Le Figaro with deep knowledge of the private libraries of chateaux across France and a winning way with their owners, Beres was tenacious in his pursuit of rare books wherever they could be found.

But he was also close to some of the leading artistic and literary figures of the 20th century, a closeness attested to by several of the 177 items up for sale.

"Pour Pierre Beres, Hommage de l'auteur," reads a pencil inscription from Pablo Picasso on the program of a privately produced play by the great Spanish artist attended by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in 1944.

Among the other items up for sale were a first edition of Gustave Flaubert's novel "Madame Bovary" with a dedication from the author to Alexandre Dumas, and corrected proofs of another of France's great 19th century novelists, Honore de Balzac.

Although bidders mainly remained anonymous, most appeared to be private dealers or collectors and several were evidently foreign.