Hector BERLIOZ. Mémoires d'Hector Berlioz... (Paris, chez tous les libraires, 1865); large in-8 (28 x 17.5 cm) of [5 ff.]-III-509 pp.-[3 ff.]; paperback (spine broken); in black half-maroquin slipcase with corners. Rare true first edition, published by the author and not sold. Wishing to leave a definitive text of his Memoirs for posterity, Berlioz had 1,200 copies printed in 1865 by the Imprimerie Vallée, of which only a dozen were distributed to close friends and family. The rest were stored in his office at the Conservatoire. After his death in 1870, publisher Michel Lévy recovered the stock and, replacing the title pages with new ones, issued the first public edition. The cover and title page bear: Mémoires d'Hector Berlioz, membre de l'Institut de France, correspondant de l'Académie des Beaux-Arts de Berlin, de celle de Sainte-Cécile de Rome, officier de la Légion d'honneur, chevalier de plusieurs ordres étrangers, etc., etc.; the lower title: Mémoires d'Hector Berlioz de 1803 à 1865 et ses voyages en Italie, en Allemagne, en Russie et en Angleterre écrit par lui-même. The work comprises a blank page, the title page with the printer's name on the spine (Paris. - Imprimerie Vallée, 15, rue Bréda), a sheet of strong paper serving as frontispiece with a photo of Berlioz on albumen paper pasted on the verso ([photo by Franck] with musical quotation from the beginning of the Symphonie fantastique), the title page, a page with the epigraph (quotation from Macbeth), the Preface (pp. I-III), then the text of the Memoirs paginated [1] to 504, the Table (pp. 505-509), a leaf with a quotation from Macbeth and the name of the printer), an Errata leaf, and a blank leaf. Original beige covers in good condition; spine broken; light spotting to frontispiece leaf and last few leaves; otherwise good condition internally, untrimmed. Hopkinson 87.