Honoré de BALZAC

First edition in bookshops.
Scattered foxing.

First edition of the 212 full-page wood engravings by Gavarni (with the exception of the final four, executed by Bertall), together with 800 wood-engraved vignettes within the text.
Contemporary romantic bindings in half red shagreen, spines with four raised bands finely decorated with triple gilt panels and gilt arabesques, red paper-covered boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, corners a trifle rubbed.
The volume features a remarkable diversity of typographical elements, including elaborate text borders and tailpieces.
Gavarni’s captioned and satirical wood engravings offer a strikingly abundant illustrative display—almost a precursor to the comic strip.
Scattered...

BALZAC Honoré de
Scènes de la vie privée [Scenes from Private Life] Mame et Delaunay-Vallée & Levavasseur, Paris 1830, 130 x 215 mm (5 1/8 x 8 7/16 ”), 2 volumes, 19th-century half sheep
The rare and sought-after first edition.
Contemporary Romantic half light-brown sheep over marbled paper boards, spine with gilt arabesques and blindstamped typographic motifs, title and volume labels in navy blue sheep renewed, gilt garlands to head and foot, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, a remboitage.
Occasional light spotting.
Handsome autograph inscription signed by Honoré de Balzac: “à Monsieur Leroy comme un témoignage de la reconnaissance...

Edition in large part original, the last two volumes contain first edition: "The Council", "The Exchange", "The Duty of a Woman", "The Honeymooners," "The beginning of the Woman of Thirty" "Rendezvous", "the Finger of God", "the two meetings", "atonement" (five chapters, unrelated, form the first draft of the Woman of thirty years).
Binders half navy sheepskin, back with four false nerves decorated with dots and gold jewels, marbled paper plates, guards and contreplats of handmade paper, sprinkled edges, slightly posterior bindings dating from the second half of the nineteenth.
donos pen heads of the guards of the first two volumes.
Some foxing mainly affecting the end of the...

The rare first edition, one of the most sought-after of Balzac’s major novels according to Clouzot.
Contemporary half speckled sheep over marbled paper boards, gilt fillets to spine.
A little occasional spotting, a short-margined copy.
Provenance: from the library at the Château du Lac Tegern (Tegernsee), which belonged to Prince Charles-Theodore of Bavaria (1795-1875). Charles-Theodore of Bavaria, the son of the first King of Bavaria, Maximilian I, was "Generalfeldmarschall" and personal councilor to the King of Bavaria (stamp: "S.K.H.D Prinzen Carl V. Bayern Güter Administration Tegernsee").
A rare copy with a princely provenance in a strictly contemporary binding.

The rare first edition.
Elegant late 19thC half brown morocco-grained shagreen over marbled paper boards, spine in six compartments, bands with gilt fillets and double gilt compartments richly decorated with gilt decorative motifs, dates gilt to foot of spine, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, top edge gilt.
Ex libris of Alexis Martin, engraved by Aglaüs Bouvenne to pastedowns.
Marginal repair to foot of several leaves; the index of the second volume has been cut out and laid down on a piece of vergé paper.
A very good copy in a nice binding of this novel, which presents one of the finest portraits of the lady of the Divine Comedy.

First edition, published under the pseudonym of Horace de Saint-Aubin.
Elegant Romantic pastiche binding from the second half of the 19th-century in half tan calf over marbled paper boards, spine with gilt and blindruled fillets, gilt friezes to head and foot of spine, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, speckled edges.
A little light spotting and light dampstains (not serious), lacking the advertising leaf at the end the second volume.
In a pretty, near-contemporary pastiche binding.