Correspondance générale d’Eugène Sue, iv (Juin 1850–1854) ed. par Jean-Pierre Galvan (review)

This new volume provides a helpful chronology for each of the years it covers, charting events such as Eugène Sue’s election to the Assemblée nationale in April 1850, the coup d’état of 2 December 1851, and the key episodes, both publishing-and politics-related, which marked Sue’s time in exile in Savoy. Though contrary to editorial tradition, the decision to place a series of lettres retrouvées at the start of the volume is a judicious one: these letters, written from Sue to his Paris publisher Maurice Lachâtre between 1849 and January 1850, provide an apposite window on the run-up to this fascinating period in Sue’s life and career. In particular, they cast critical light on the genesis of the writing and publication of Les Mystères du peuple, the epic novel to which Sue devoted much of his time during his years in exile. As Jean-Pierre Galvan points out, Sue considered this work ‘le couronnement de sa carrière littéraire et politique’ (p. 16), and his involvement in both literary and political spheres, and the recurrent intersections of the two, are indeed the most salient theme of the collection. Sue’s frequent addition of the epithet ‘représentant du peuple’ to his signature points to his keen sense of political duty, and yet his account of his detention at Mont-Valérien in an 1852 letter to Victor Schoelcher betrays a penchant for exaggeration which is unmistakably that of the feuilletoniste. Galvan is systematic about placing such detail within its historical context, via meticulous footnotes: ‘J’ai été [.. .] transporté au Mont Valérien où je suis resté trois semaines’, writes Sue (p. 314), when in fact he was held for only ten days; in an 1857 account, Galvan notes, Sue would prolong his sojourn to 7 January 1852. Another wise editorial decision is the reproduction in their entirety of the often expansive lettres aux abonnés with which Sue framed his instalments of Les Mystères du peuple; these letters illustrate the pedagogical and political project Sue had assigned himself, and also provide important historical context for each serial episode. While some individual addressees, such as Schoelcher, are familiar from previous volumes, two new correspondents rise to prominence in this tome, as they did in Sue’s life during his exile. His abundant letters to Ferdinand Flocon from December 1852 provide a wealth of information about his daily life and literary activities, and in particular detail the evolution of the Swiss edition of Les Mystères du peuple, which had been halted in 1851 but would be restarted by Flocon in 1854. Letters to Marie de Solms provide some back-ground to Sue’s 1856 defence of her in Une page de l’histoire de mes livres, and also go some way towards explaining Sue’s falling-out with Étienne Masset. Detailed biographies of both Flocon and Solms are provided in the invaluable and exhaustive ‘Dictionnaire des correspondants’. This extremely well edited volume will be a useful resource for any scholars interested in Sue’s literary or political endeavours, and for historians of the Second Republic and Second Empire more generally.