28 000 €

Réf : 81415

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Arthur RIMBAUD

Une saison en enfer

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

Une saison en enfer [A Season in Hell]
Alliance typographique (M. J. Poot & C^ie) Bruxelles 1873 | 12,5 x 18,5 cm | full morocco and custom slipcase

First edition published in small numbers at the author's expense.
Binding in full black morocco elaborately decorated in blind, original wrappers preserved, half black morocco slipcase, outstanding binding signed Semet & Plumelle.
This very scarce first edition is a major collector's piece on several counts: it remains the only work published by Rimbaud himself, then a young unknown 19-year-old poet. He eventually never honored his debt towards the printer. The latter therefore kept almost the entire print, subsequently forgotten 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 the well-preserved 425 copies and destroyed the rest damaged by humidity.
The curious composition of the work is also a surprising peculiarity of this precious edition: without a title page nor endpapers (the text begins ex abrupto after the cover and finishes the same way), the seventeen blank pages inserted far and wide in the book, as well as the misprints and spelling errors peppered through the text are also curiosities subjected to scholarly research. 
Sought-after and collected very early on by bibliophiles, copies of this mythical edition were bound by the greatest French binders namely Pierre Lucien Martin, Semet & Plumelle, Paul Bonet or Georges Leroux.
A very beautiful copy set in an outstanding blind tooled full morocco binding by Semet & Plumelle.
 

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