Marbot: A Biography

New York: Geroge Brazillerr, Inc., 1983. First Printing Stated . Hard Back. Very Good/Very Good. 6" X 8 1/2. 246 Pages Indexed. Translated from the original 1981 German copyright. Beautiful black cloth binding with silver spine lettering and silver decorations to front including author's initials. No defects to book noted and appears to have hardly been opened. Interior text pages are faulltless. Dust jacket front flap price $16.50 is unclipped, has a 6 inch crease, and minor wer to edges. The biography of Sir Andrew Marbot (1801-1831) contains within it an inquiry into the great age of Romanticism. Marbot's extraordinary and mysterious life is immersed in the intellectual landscape of the early 19th century. During his brief life, Marbot meets and converses with the likes of Wordsworth, Coleridge and De Quincey (who were frequent guests at his parents' estate in the north of England), as well as Goethe, Delacroix and Byron. Indeed, Marbot's life may aptly be described as Byronic, including two Grand Tours of the Continent, an intense emotional relationship with his mother, and an untimely death at the age of 30 by suicide, though even that is shrouded in mystery. Hildesheimer's biography aims to rediscover Marbot's pioneering work in art criticism, crediting him with the theory that regards the creativity of the genius as a deviation and seeks to uncover the motivations of the artist, anticipating the work of Freud by more than fifty years. This is a theoretical biography-more reconstruction of a mental landscape, to the extent that that is possible, than a mere recording and narration of empirical fact. A tour-de-force in any respect, Marbot brings to life an entire age and sensibility, as well as one of the most unusual figures of history and art. Twenty-four pages of black white and illustrations primarily consisting of portraits.