TOCQUEVILLE, Alexis de.
De La Démocratie En Amérique.
“THIS IS BY FAR THE BEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN ABOUT AMERICA”: RARE FIRST EDITION OF TOCQUEVILLE’S MASTERPIECE DE LA DEMOCRATIE EN AMERIQUE
Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1835.
$40,000.00
Out of Stock
Item Number: RRB-59002
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First editions of both parts of Tocqueville's magnum opus. Octavo, four volumes bound in three-quarters calf over marbled boards, illustrated with a folding hand-colored lithographic map. In near fine condition with the half titles present, minor toning. The first part was published in January of 1835, with less that 500 copies known to have been printed. The second part followed in April of 1840, with the first part already in its eighth edition at the time, due to its immediate success. Sets containing the first editions of both parts are rare, especially in this condition.
“One of the most important texts in political literature” (PMM). “This is by far the best book ever written about America, and the most penetrating book ever written about democracy. It won instant acclaim, not only in the writer’s native France, where Royer-Collard declared: “Nothing equal to it had appeared since Montesquieu,’ but in England, where John Stuart Mill hailed it as ‘among the most remarkable productions of our time.’ Its central theme is that democracy has become inevitable; that it is, with certain qualifications, desirable; but that it has great potentialities for evil as well as good, depending upon how well it is understood and guided. In the view of de Tocqueville, the greatest danger that threatens democracy is its tendency toward the centralization and concentration of power… There is revived interest in Tocqueville today because of what seems like the uncanny clairvoyance of his prophecies. For example (this by a Frenchman in 1835): ‘There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans… The principal instrument of [America] is liberty; of [Russia] servitude. Their starting point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe” (Hazlitt, 163).
De La Démocratie En Amérique.
$40,000.00
Out of Stock
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