Léon Hayard

Anti-Dreyfusard moving caricature entitled “Zola dans la mé...lasse !”
Léon Hayard, Paris s.d(1898), 12 x 17.8 cm, a moving caricature
First edition of this anti-Dreyfusard moving caricature printed on cardboard entitled "Zola dans la mé...lasse !" by P. Dous Y'Nell. A paper fastener is used to activate the mechanism of a soldier's arm, wearing red trousers and a red kepi, plunging the writer into a barrel labelled “vidange” “sewage”. This caricature, although printed with 30,000 copies by Léon Hayard - the king of the camelots - is today extremely rare.
Some small foxing, otherwise a beautiful copy.
These ephemeral, extremely fragile, paper games were distributed in order to influence public opinion. Using iconographic codes of popular mediums (Game of the Goose, articulated puppet or comic strip) these pamphlet caricatures participated in the social and political divide in France. Booming press releases - at the same time as the famous J'accuse! by Emile Zola in L'Aurore - had a strong influence on public opinion. These seemingly playful propaganda materials had a significant impact on the younger generations and preceded the ideological violence of the 20th century.

First edition of this anti-Dreyfusard tract, published after “J'accuse”. This virulent pamphlet takes the macabre form of a death notice, with a black border as was usual at the time, calling on its readers to “come to the procession, service, and funeral of this pornographer and defender of the traitor Dreyfus”.
Nicknamed the “king of the street pedlars”, the publisher Léon Hayard specialized in political pamphlets and more specifically satirical obituaries and wills.
Two copies in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, one in the Musée Carnavalet and one in the British Library as well as one in the collections of the Mémorial de la Shoah.
Very well conserved given the fragility of the paper of this ephemeral document that is witness to the violent anti-Semitism exacerbated by the Dreyfus affair.