A. Strindberg | Autograph notebook, 1893-1895

August Strindberg

Autograph notebook signed ("August Strindberg"), CONTAINING FOUR AUTOGRAPH DRAWINGS OF THE MOON

recording the names and addresses of many acquaintances from the period 1893-1895, including Maurizio Barricelli, N. Erichsen, Ernst Brausewetter, Albert Langen, Auguste Germain, Francisco Durrio, Enrique Carillo, [William] Molard, Lucienne Dorsy, Gabriel Randon, Henri Bauër, Emil Schering, Fredrik Wrangel, Isidore de Lara, Nils Strindberg, Karin Strindberg, Charles Morice, Julien Leclercq, Antoine de Saporta, Holger Sinding, François Jollivet-Castelot, Théodore Tiffereau, Émile Pontich, Paul Jonas, J.T. Grein and William Heinemann, also detailing expenses, including those associated with Strindberg's wedding to Frida Uhl, and the addresses of laboratories ("...Greiner...Luisenstr. 8 Kemikalienhandlung..."), documenting names of cabarets, cafés, taverns and theatres, including the Berlin tavern "Zum schwarzen Ferkel", further containing Strindberg's copy of a telegram, lists of chemicals and some chemical formulae, WITH FOUR AUTOGRAPH PENCIL DRAWINGS OF THE MOON

...Richard Grelling

  Markgrafenstrasse 38

  Berlin

  Je prie demander 300 Francs à compte Steinschneider par depêche. Strindberg.

  Copie...

c.239 pages, plus blanks, 7 x 4.8cm, the entries in pencil and ink, the pencil drawings of the moon dated 25 November 1893, some leaves with index tabs, gilt edges, patterned gilt endpapers, calf, small embossed flower to upper cover, single metal clasp, Berlin, Heligoland, Paris, and elsewhere, 1893-1895, one leaf detached, one page excised, light wear to covers, small tears to head and foot of spine

A REMARKABLE VOLUME - PART NOTEBOOK, PART ADDRESS BOOK - DOCUMENTING THE ACTIVITIES AND OBSESSIONS OF THE GREAT SWEDISH PLAYWRIGHT DURING AND SHORTLY BEFORE THE TIME OF HIS SO-CALLED 'INFERNO CRISIS'. 

Turning his back on his literary preoccupations, and his native Sweden, in the early-to-mid-1890s, Strindberg devoted himself to esoteric and alchemical research in Berlin (end of 1892 to 1894) and Paris (August 1894 to summer 1896). The present volume provides intimate testimony of this period of upheaval and interior crisis in his life - the so-called 'Inferno crisis' (named after his 1897 autobiographical novel Inferno) - recording in fascinating, lapidary detail the diverse group of people with whom he associated as well as documenting his current intellectual obsessions, these including, notably, his interest in astronomical photography and alchemy.