Sappho

Published in 1884 as Sapho, this novel follows Jean Gaussin, a young man from the south of France who comes to Paris and becomes the lover of Fanny Legrand, an older artist's model known in that circle as Sappho. Their affair is passionate and jealous; Jean meets the painters and keepers of Fanny's past and tries, and fails, to make the attachment respectable or to leave it. The book is a study of a lopsided liaison and of Parisian bohemia, not a life of the ancient poet and not a roman a clef of one identifiable salon.

Bound in blue-green artificial silk. Glassine dust-jacket. Grey slipcase with a paper cover title panel.