New Expansion to the 'Guêpes' Collection: 1871 post-Paris Commune reboot!

The Revenant Archive maintains a growing collection of Gustave Karr's rare, self-published avant-garde satirical magazine Les Guêpes (The Wasps), a milestone series in the history of avant-garde and DIY publishing, and an important potential resource for researchers of the counter-cultural milieu of the time.

After the convulsions of the Paris Commune (whose stated goals Karr seems to have generally supported, with some reservations) and the fall of Napoleon III's regime, the sixty-year-old Karr was able to write relatively free of censorship for the first time in his life. In response, he re-launched Les Guêpes, unfettered for the first time, and probably closer in many ways to his ideal conception of the journal when he had first begun in more than 30 years earlier. While the magazine had always pushed the boundaries of political expression, even for a small-run self-published journal, the political content in this new incarnation is much more predominant and specific, reflecting both his greater sense of freedom and the fact that he now lived in Nice, far removed from the Parisian Bohemian community whose chronicles had supplied so much of the first incarnation's material.

It is thus particularly interesting to peruse these issues, the first of which he must have started writing soon after his 1871 letter included in the archive, for a glimpse of the immediate post-commune period. As usual, Karr's satire and criticism cuts in every direction, refusing any doctrinaire position on the event or its fallout. While censorship had been officially abolished for the first time in France's history, it should be remembered that this lifting of censorship came fast on the heels of around ten-thousand summary executions of communards and around an equal number imprisoned or deported by the new government, and an untold number of participants in permanent exile. Out-and-out support of the Communard cause, then, remained potentially dangerous should the political winds change direction slightly. Nonetheless, Karr evinces considerably more sympathy with the Communards than the large majority of intellectuals at the time, even on the Left. He supports clemency for Communards, a position for which Victor Hugo's home had been attacked by a mob, even in neighbouring Belgium, affirms many of their concerns and criticizes the Liberal capitalist Republic for its shortcomings (as his 1871 letter would imply), and indicates that he had indeed fought at the barricades against the Imperial government in Nice.

Although the underground status that Les Guêpes had acquired since its initial series expanded Karr's potential readership and distribution network (this new series was published and sold jointly in both Nice and Paris), it remained as close to a DIY endeavour as the technology of the day allowed. Since binding remained prohibitively expensive, each number was issued in the form of a set of unbound signatures lain into the paper wrap. This set includes an extra Supplement signature in each issue, probably indicating that the original owner was a subscriber; they cut and read every page except the several pages of adverts at the end of each supplement–every single one of which remains uncut.

Les Guêpes: Revue politique, philosophique et littéraire. No. 1, Oct. 15, 1871. Ed. & written by Alphonse Karr.  Wrap: Second Edition, interior First; w/supplement. Librairie Nouvelle: Paris / A. Gilletta: Nice. Two unbound duodecimo signatures in paper wrap, 44 pp.

Although the outside wrap of this issue is from the 2nd Edition, the interior pages give no edition number and match the rest of the first-edition set with which it was purchased; most likely, the initial wrap was damaged early in this copy's life and a wrap from the 2nd edition supplied by the publisher.

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Les Guêpes: Revue politique, philosophique et littéraire. No. 2, Oct. 22, 1871. Ed. & written by Alphonse Karr. First Edition, w/supplement. Librairie Nouvelle: Paris / A. Gilletta: Nice. Two unbound duodecimo signatures in paper wrap, 48 pp.

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Les Guêpes: Revue politique, philosophique et littéraire. No. 3, Oct. 29, 1871. Ed. & written by Alphonse Karr. First Edition, w/supplement. Librairie Nouvelle: Paris / A. Gilletta: Nice. Two unbound duodecimo signatures in paper wrap, 48 pp.

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Les Guêpes: Revue politique, philosophique et littéraire. No. 4, Nov. 5, 1871. Ed. & written by Alphonse Karr. First Edition, w/supplement. Librairie Nouvelle: Paris / A. Gilletta: Nice. Two unbound duodecimo signatures in paper wrap, 48 pp.

  

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Les Guêpes: Revue politique, philosophique et littéraire. No. 5, Nov. 12, 1871. Ed. & written by Alphonse Karr. First Edition, w/supplement. Librairie Nouvelle: Paris / A. Gilletta: Nice. Two unbound duodecimo signatures in paper wrap, 48 pp.

 

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Les Guêpes: Revue politique, philosophique et littéraire. No. 7, Nov. 26, 1871. Ed. & written by Alphonse Karr. First Edition, w/supplement. Librairie Nouvelle: Paris / A. Gilletta: Nice. Two unbound duodecimo signatures in paper wrap, 48 pp.

 

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Les Guêpes: Revue politique, philosophique et littéraire. No. 8, Dec. 3, 1871. Ed. & written by Alphonse Karr. First Edition, w/supplement. Librairie Nouvelle: Paris / A. Gilletta: Nice. Two unbound duodecimo signatures in paper wrap, 48 pp.

  

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Les Guêpes: Revue politique, philosophique et littéraire. No. 10, Dec. 17, 1871. Ed. & written by Alphonse Karr. First Edition, w/supplement. Librairie Nouvelle: Paris / A. Gilletta: Nice. Two unbound duodecimo signatures in paper wrap, 48 pp.

  

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Les Guêpes: Revue politique, philosophique et littéraire. IInd Volume: Booklet No. 13, Jan. 7, 1872. Ed. & written by Alphonse Karr. First Edition, w/supplement. Librairie Nouvelle: Paris / A. Gilletta: Nice. Two unbound duodecimo signatures in paper wrap, 48 pp.

  

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