Hugo, Victor - Emile Zola, Ivan Turgenev and others

Album comprising 34 autograph manuscripts in French, English, German, Italian and Spanish, and inclusing music scores, bound in a 4to volume (12 1/4 x 9 1/4 in.; 310 x 230 mm), the manuscripts are written on the album or on mounted sheets, numbered and preceded by a title-page; bound in green shagreen, iron lettered title on the front cover; Spine faded. 

Interesting album of autograph notes, reflexions, aphorisms, and music scores established by Princess Marie de Lusignan, in order to be sold to fund the publication of the "Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique et Biographique des Femmes Célèbres."

 
Contributors include Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas fils, Ivan Turgenev, Pauline Viardot, Princess Eugenie of Sweden and Norway, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Grace Greenwood, Susan B. Anthony, Sarah Bernhardt, Frédéric Mistral.
Victor Hugo contributed a poem from "Le Chant du Crepuscule": "Soyez comme l'oiseau posé pour un instant Sur des rameaux trop frêles, Qui sent ployer la branche et qui chante pourtant, Sachant qu'il a des ailes". Turgenev misquoted Goethe in German: "Ohne Hast und [sic] ohne Rast Goethe ("Sans se hater, sans s'arrêter") [Hasten not, rest not]. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote a vigorous speech for women rights. Emile Zola chose to modify slightly a quote from Mes Haines (1866): "Une école n'est jamais qu'une halte dans la marche d'une litterature" [A school is just a step in the progression of literature]. In his 1866 publication, he wrote "Art" instead of "Literature".

Interesting album of autograph notes relating to  women's rights.