RICTUS (Jehan). Les Soliloques du Pauvre. Paris: Société du Mercure de France, 1897. - In-12, 181 x 115: 208 pp, (4 ff. last blank), printed cover. Red half-chagrin, spine ribbed with gilt fillets, front cover preserved (period binding). Second edition, partly original, published in the same year as the first, finished printing on May 23, 1897, just a few days after the latter, which was self-published on May 4 of the same year and quickly sold out. It contains 4 new quatrains in the long poem entitledLe Printemps (first, second and third quatrains on page 166 ["Mes poteaux?..." to "Et la scionnée du sacrifice."] and second quatrain on page 168 ["Et j'me vois comme à l'ambulance..." to "Et bouffer l'pain d'l'obéissance."]). Most copies bear a fictitious edition number, this one "Troisième édition". Copy of the Montmartre chansonnier, journalist, pamphleteer and syndicalist Jean-Baptiste Clément (1836-1903), enriched with this autograph letter signed by the author on the false title For J. B. Clément // His faithful // GR. // Jehan Rictus // (June 1897) He then copied this quatrain from the poem Espoir: We remember the Communeux Whose brains were questioned By planting their vitreous À coups d'ribouis et d'point's d'ombrelles JR // (from Soliloquies) Jean Baptiste Clément, from a wealthy family, left home at an early age to work in a variety of trades, before becoming involved in socialist militancy in Paris. He wrote the famous song Le Temps des cerises in 1866, which a few years later became the cult song celebrating the hope of the Commune insurrection. He opposed the Empire by collaborating with opposition newspapers. A member of the Paris Commune in 1871, he took part in the suppression of the uprisings, then went into exile in London, where he continued his fight. Repatriated after the amnesty of 1880, he founded socialist organizations and helped found the Parti ouvrier socialiste révolutionnaire. He died in 1903, and his burial at Père-Lachaise attracted between four and five thousand people. This is an interesting and moving provenance, given that Rictus and Clément were, within a few years of each other, committed figures in popular song and protest poetry. Spine partly worn. Covers and hinges rubbed, one jaw missing.