R. Pornin & Cie

New edition, expanded from the novel entitled Amélina, épisode de la conquête et de la colonisation des Espagnols dans l'île d'Haïti (Tours, 1841), which comprised only the first narrative.

The following two, set respectively in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, are by a certain A***, who has not been identified.

Contemporary Romantic binding in full brown calf, smooth faded spine decorated with gilt Romantic arabesques, covers framed with gilt fillets and gilt Romantic arabesques, white moiré silk endpapers and pastedowns, corners bumped, gilt fillets to the board edges, all edges gilt.

Restorations to spine, a few minor spots of foxing.

First edition of this rare work. Several states are known: without any plates, not even the engraved title-frontispiece (the extremely rare deluxe issue); with the engraved title bearing the same imprint as the printed title (Tours, R. Pornin et Cie); and, finally, with the Paris, Lehuby imprint (as in the present copy).

The following explanation may be proposed: the Tours publisher Pornin reserved a small portion of the edition, without the engraved material, for the author's friends. The remainder was shared with the Paris publisher Lehuby, a specialist in children's books, who ensured its wider distribution.

The work is illustrated with a frontispiece and two steel-engraved...