Eugène Renduel

First edition, rare copy with no statement of print.
Full blue morocco binding, spine with raised bands in the Jansenist style, endpapers and pastedowns of combed marbled paper, gilt dentelle framing the pastedowns, double gilt fillets and gilt tooling to headcaps and board edges, top edge gilt with untrimmed margins preserved, original front wrapper bound in, binding signed by Marius Michel. Monogrammed bookplate mounted on the verso of the first endpaper.
This copy is enriched with four hors-texte plates by Louis Boulanger and Alfred Johannot.
Signed autograph inscription by Victor Hugo on the half-title: « À Monsieur Ch[arles] Mévil son bien cordialement dévoué Victor Hugo. »

First edition.
Bound in red half Russia with corners, spine with four raised bands gilt-ruled and decorated with double gilt panels, date in gilt at foot within a compartment, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, rare wrappers and spine preserved, top edge gilt, uncut, binding signed by Bernasconi.
The catalogue leaf of Victor Hugo’s works is present. A few folding creases to some leaves.

Mounted opposite the definitive version printed on p. 223 is a precious autograph poem by Victor Hugo, entitled “La pauvre fleur disait au papillon céleste”, on two folded leaves mounted on a stub. This is a first version, consisting of four quatrains. These verses were reworked by Hugo, with some variants, in the definitive version, augmented with four additional quatrains.

The poem was composed by Hugo for his mistress Juliette Drouet, whom he had met two years earlier. It symbolizes the nature of their relationship—the poet bound by his marital and literary life, the young woman condemned to wait for him—and played a central role in their shared imagination: Juliette Drouet frequently quoted the line “Et moi je reste seule à voir tourner mon ombre / À mes pieds !” in her love letters to Victor Hugo. The double motif of the flower and the butterfly, alongside their entwined initials, also appears in the painted decoration of the Chinese salon from Hauteville Fairy, Juliette Drouet’s residence in Guernsey, a décor conceived by Hugo himself and now preserved at the Maison Victor Hugo in Paris.

A fine uncut copy, in a charming signed binding, enriched with a very rare autograph poem by Victor Hugo written for Juliette Drouet.

First illustrated edition, first issue, published in a single volume; a more common three-volume edition appeared later the same year, in 1836. With an engraved frontispiece title and 11 full-page steel engravings printed on heavy wove paper by Johannot, Boulanger, Raffet, Rogier & Rouargue, and engraved by Finden, Staines... The typography is spacious, with wide margins, and closely follows the original 1831 edition. The plate "De l'utilité des fenêtres" is present, as it should be—Clouzot notes it is often missing due to its later printing relative to the book’s first issue.
Bound circa 1860 in navy blue half morocco. Spine with raised bands, gilt compartments, and navy morocco lettering-pieces. Top edge gilt. A few occasional spots, notably on the frontispiece, but overall a fresh copy, with the engravings particularly well-preserved as they are often found browned. A handsome copy.