Léon BLOY. Autograph manuscript, Méditations d'un Solitaire, [1916]; 20 pages in-8 (about 21 x 13,5 cm) plus title, mounted on tabs, bound in half tan leather, gilt title on upper cover (Semet & Plumelle). Precious first draft and working manuscript of this very beautiful book written in 1916, and published at Mercure de France in May 1917. This "first draft" (as Bloy notes on an envelope, at the head), of first draft, presents numerous erasures and corrections. The leaves are filled with a tiny handwriting, with numerous additions called by blue or red pencil strokes. The manuscript does not include the text of the dedication to Elisabeth de Groux, nor the letter to Henry de Groux (published in La Caravane in January 1917) which will be published in appendix of the book. However, there are two dedications to Georges Auric (for L'Âme de Napoléon and Le Mendiant ingrat); at the end of the manuscript, Bloy wrote the note "Pour servir de préface". In thirty meditations, Bloy, "alone in the antechamber of God", delivers "the war contribution of an old writer that the war almost killed. It is the thought, the whole thought of a man of France who dies of the sorrow of not being able to do better for his country, but who wants to hope that his words will have the power to comfort some souls mysteriously related to his own. Léon Bloy exhibition, Bibliothèque Nationale, 1968, n° 239. Former Daniel Sickles collection (XVI, n°6678). Ex-libris Joseph Royer painted in gouache by Charles-Henri Herrmann.