Paris

Reprint of the works by Houssiaux, who had purchased the stock of the Furne bookshop, where Honoré de Balzac's works were originally published.
Houssiaux completed them with three new volumes (Theatre, Contes drôlatiques...) which appear here for the first time in the collected works in 1855.
Some foxing.
Bound in half green shagreen with corners, spines with four raised bands decorated with gilt typographical motifs, marbled paper boards, endpapers and pastedowns of handmade paper.
Work illustrated with 143 plates on tinted heavy paper, by the finest artists of the period including Bertall, Daumier, Gavarni, Johannot, Nanteuil as well as rare illustrations within the text and

Autograph letter dated and signed by Victor Hugo, to his great friend and personal physician Emile Allix. 30 lines in black ink on two pages of a bifolium signed with the single letter "V", greatest mark of affection the writer could give, usually reserved for his two sons, his daughter, his wife and his friends Auguste Vacquerie and Paul Meurice.
Back in Guernsey in a deserted Hauteville House, Hugo was in the middle of writing Quatre Vingt Treize and acutely felt the absence of his close friends and family. He thanked his friend, the illustrious doctor Allix, a member of the circle of Jersey outlaws, who had also stayed at Hauteville House many times

Edition of the year of the first edition.
Spine very slightly sunned with a light stain at head, the last gathering was poorly cut causing small lacks at the head of the leaves.
Autograph inscription signed by Henri Bosco to journalist Evelyne Schlumberger: "... voici l'enfant et ses sortilèges..." ["... here is the child and his enchantments..."]