The Pléiade edition for Les Misérables is a 2018 novelty, and since I happen to own it, I decided to share a few pics in case the fandom was wondering was it looked like ^^ ( @flo-nelja @pilferingapples I thought you’d be interested!!) For those who don’t know, the Pléiade is a really elegant edition of books considered masterpieces. Only the most praised authors get their works published in the Pléiade! Of course, Victor Hugo is one of them, and Les Misérables finally made it to a stand alone book. The book may look fairly thin when one knows just how long the Brick is, but that’s part of the particularity of a Pléiade: silky soft paper, so thin you feel like a breeze could rip it. It’s the kind of collector edition you don’t just leave in your bag for months! And though it doesn’t look like it, the book is ~1750 pages long! So, what makes a Pléiade so special, you ask? Let me walk you through it! Unfortunately my mediocre skills in photography don’t do justice to the book, so forgive me for this ^^
pics 1 to 3: As you can see, it’s a hardcover book, with two green fabric bookmarks bound to the book. Nothing really special to it other than the fact that the text is written quite small, in a font unique to the Pléiade, where a small loop bind the ‘c’ or ‘s’ to the letter ‘t’ when they follow each other.
pic 4 and 5: a handful of black and white illustration pages showcase some of Hugo’s drawings for the story. Here, a drawing entitled ‘Miseria’ made for the “frontispiece of the novel”, Gavroche, and Thenardier, as imagined by Hugo!
pic 6: two manuscript pages written by Hugo; notes taken during his research to write “Waterloo”.
pic 7: there are some pages dedicated to drawings, engravings and photographs of the characters! Here, Cosette.
pic 8 and 9: press drawings!! Complete with a small text to make the reader laugh/react! My two favorite drawings read:
[under the flower] Portrait of Fantine
[under the man blatantly wiping tears with a handkerchief] End of Volume I. Here the reader wipes a tear.
pic 10: an extensive note section!! (there is almost 150 pages worth of notes, written in tiny tiny text!) I personally find the notes very helpful, the section was done with great care.
If you read French and are really passionate about Les Misérables, I think you will probably love this edition (though I still keep my pocket edition for notetaking and casual rereading)! But let’s not kid ourselves: the Pléiade remains an elitist and pricy edition, so it can be hard to come upon one. That’s why I wanted to share a few snippets of it!! I hope some of you will find interest in this post. I will gladly discuss it more at length with anyone who asks, my askbok is always open. So if you have a question in mind, feel free to drop by! 😀
!!! you were very right that I’d be interested! This edition is a Dream Book 😀 I’d love to hear more about any neat info you found in the notes!
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