SENANCOUR Etienne Pivert de. On current generations. Human absurdities. Dreamer of the Alps. Paris, 1793; in-12, [4]-iv-415 pp. mid 19th century binding, half fawn morocco with corners, spine ribbed and decorated with gilt fleurons, gilt head, untrimmed. Very rare first edition of the second book published by the author, who remained anonymous for a long time. Senancour was identified in the early 1960s by Roger Braunschweig, an academic who at the time knew of only one copy of the book, in the Geneva library. "Senancour's experience symbolises that of many of his contemporaries, whose revolt led to the most painful inner malaise (...). When, at the height of the Terror, the fanciful Rêveur des Alpes published this little book, now impossible to find, at the age of twenty-three (...) his anti-social mood reached a climax. The cancellation of his fortune by assignats, and even more so a mismatched marriage, these very individual misfortunes exposed the sensitivity of a sick child" (André Monglond, Le Préromantisme français, I, p. 115). - Presumed to have belonged to Roger Braunschweig. Monglond, II, 952; the book escaped Vicaire, Carteret, Escoffier and Joachim Merlant (Bibliographie de Sénancour, 1905).