The Goncourt Brothers Hardcover - 1960

London: Andre Deutsch, 1960. Gold title on orange boards which are unmarked with no wear. Internally there is age tonig to endpapers, a little light foxing to to and fore edges else very clean, tight and unmarked. A Very Good+ copy. Dustjacket has a repaired closed tear and light wear and is not price clipped. 351 pages. Portrait frontispiece. Translated from the French by Margaret Shaw. Jules and Edmmond de Goncourt were the most remarkable pair of collaborators in the history of literature. Their lives were dedicated to each other and to the art of writing, to the exclusion of anything else of importance. As novelists, they were pioneers of realism; their books, in which the single-minded serch for truth sometimes resulted in over-documentation, are seldom read today, but their influence on the development of novel-writing cannot be overestimated. The brothers also acted as guides to the aesthetic taste of their time, notably in their enthusiasm for the 18th century and for the art of Japan. But it is their journals in which they recorded in minutest detail the French literary scene of th 19th century, which have assured their immortality. 3. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.