Aurelia

English translation of Gérard de Nerval’s Aurélia, a beautiful but often harrowing mix of reverie, autobiography, and hallucination written between 1853 and 1854. It records the various visions and obsessions Nerval experienced during periods of mental illness and centres on his memories of Jenny Colon, an actress whom he fell passionately in love with but who married another man and died in 1842. This Birchgrove Press edition is based on an English translation by Richard Aldington published in 1932. It contains six lithographs by Pearl Binder.