Album of signatures created by Cecil Henland, 1908 issue bearing 36 signatures of leading figures from literature, cinema, music, the press and French theatre, each dated between 1908 and 1910.
Bound in red shagreen, smooth spine with title gilt-stamped, vignette mounted on the upper cover, gilt edges, publisher’s binding.
Illustrated with a cover vignette with an ink signature of "The Ghost of a Celebrated General" (General Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts Association).
One of the most precious copies of this ghostly album, before Rorschach tests and Surrealist transfer drawings, previously belonging to Yvonne Redelsperger, future wife of the publisher Gaston Gallimard.
The greatest figures of the artistic Paris scene left strange signatures folded while still wet, revealing 36 skeleton-like ink silhouettes: Edmond Rostand, Georges Feydeau, Sacha Guitry, Maurice Leblanc and Gaston Leroux, Octave Mirbeau, Camille Saint-Saëns, as well as Marcel Proust’s close friends Paul Hervieu, Robert de Flers and Gaston de Caillavet – the latter two were inspirations for the character Robert de Saint-Loup in In Search of Lost Time.