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Arthur RIMBAUD

Une saison en enfer

Alliance typographique (M.J. Poot & Cie), Bruxelles 1873, 12,5x18,5cm, relié sous chemise et étui.

Une saison en enfer [A Season in Hell]
 

First edition published with a small number of copies and at the author's expense.
 
Binding in full black morocco, plates adorned with a dense decor of blue, violet and mauve pieces of mosaic morocco as well as pieces of red and blue box, all being crossed by a tangle of gilt blind tooled fillets, mouse grey box endpapers, covers and spine preserved, all edges gilt, chemise in half black morocco in stripes, pearl grey box boards, black felt interior, slipcase lined with black morocco, glued paper boards, grey felt interior, superb binding signed Pierre-Lucien Martin.
 
Of great rarity, the first edition of Une saison en enfer is a major bibliophilic piece on several counts: the only book published at Rimbaud's will, then a young unknown 19-year-old poet, the printer was never paid for this discreet volume published at the author's expense, the printer, therefore, kept almost the entire print which was forgotten about in the workshop (Arthur Rimbaud obtained only a dozen copies offered to his friends). The stock was found in 1901 by a bibliophile who retrieved 425 copies in beautiful condition and destroyed the rest, damaged by humidity.
 
The curious composition of the work is also a surprising peculiarity of this precious edition: the absence of an endpaper and title page or final pages (the text begins ex abrupto after the cover and finishes in the same way), the seventeen blank pages inserted far and wide in the book, and of course the misprints and spelling errors that are peppered through the text are also curiosities studied by exegetes. Christophe Bataillé devotes an important article to it in the Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France (2008/3 -Vol. 108) and concludes that an editorial and perhaps auctorial will presides over this surprising layout.
 
Sought after and collected very early on by bibliophiles, this mythical edition was often bound in full Jansenist morocco, the copies with mosaic bindings are of an extreme rarity.
 
A very beautiful copy wonderfully set in a full doubled mosaic morocco binding by Pierre-Lucien Martin.  

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