Gift ideas above 10 000 €

First edition, one of 12, 13, or 14 numbered copies on Whatman paper depending on the volume, the only deluxe paper copies. The first three volumes had no limited deluxe paper issue and are from an edition of 3,000 copies each. The Whatman copies are as follows:
- 12 copies for volumes seven, eight, nine, twelve, and thirteen,

- 13 copies for volumes four, five, six, ten, and eleven,

- 14 copies for the final four volumes.
Half dark brown morocco with bands, smooth spines, author, title, and volume numbers tooled in palladium, vellum-style boards, plain endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers preserved for every volume, top edges in palladium (uncut for the Whatman copies), bindings signed by René Kieffer (binder’s stamp and label on the first endpaper of each volume). Head of vol. 2 lightly rubbed.

Copy belonging to Charles Péguy’s collaborator André Bourgeois, administrator of the Cahiers de la quinzaine (literary magazine which published this novel). It exceptionally contains valuable bound-in manuscript notes by Romain Rolland and Péguy.

This exceedingly rare set in first edition is handsomely bound by the great René Kieffer. It contains every volume issued on deluxe paper - these being "deuxième exemplaire de souche", i.e. name copies of the administrator after Charles Péguy's copy and before the printer's.

First edition of the French translation, one of 25 numbered copies on pur fil, the only copies printed on deluxe paper.

Blood red morocco binding, gilt title lenghtwise, black stingray boards framed in morocco, gilt decorative paper endleaves, original wrappers preserved, top edge gilt, an elegant binding signed Boichot. Front free endpaper slightly toned, otherwise a handsome untrimmed copy.

Illustrated with original woodcuts by Jean-Gabriel Daragnès.

First edition of this rare album illustrated with 18 lithographed plates, including the title-frontispiece (see Inventaire du Fonds Français, VII, 243, no. 21).

This unbound suite is housed in a grey cloth chemise and matching modern slipcase, spine unlettered with two tears at head and tail, plain boards, light soiling to the lower board.

Some scattered foxing.

Autograph Manuscript Poem in Russian, entitled “Ананасы в шампанском,” signed by Igor Severyanin, twelve lines in three quatrains on a single sheet, with minor punctuation variations from the text originally published under the title Ouverture (Увертюра), inaugurating his collection Pineapple with Champagne (1915), from which it took its name.

Autograph Manuscript of the Masterpiece by the whimsical poet Igor Severyanin, one of the most emblematic poems of Russian literature, embodying the “Ego-Futurism” movement founded by the poet at the end of 1911 - the very first Futurist movement established in Russia.

On the eve of the Revolution, this work, both inspired and violently criticised by Mayakovsky, stands at the crossroads of Dadaist provocation, Futurist dynamism, and the dandyism of a bourgeois class soon to disappear.

Very rare first edition of this splendid photographic album, produced in Cairo in 1871, representing the first illustrated catalogue of the earliest museum devoted to Egyptology.

The photographs by Hippolyte Delié and Émile Béchard depict the rooms and antiquities of the Boulaq Museum, founded in Cairo in 1863 by the eminent Egyptologist Auguste Mariette (1821–1881).

The album comprises forty albumen prints (approx. 24.5 × 18 cm), mounted on thick card leaves set on guards, each accompanied by a letterpress commentary leaf (except plates 4 and 11, which each have two). The prints are mounted on the versos of the plates, the rectos bearing the printed captions.

Contemporary half brown shagreen, spine with five raised bands decorated with blind-tooled compartments and gilt floral tools, minor rubbing to spine and joints, headcaps slightly softened, blind-tooled interlaced borders on the boards, gilt title on upper board, endpapers and pastedowns in white moiré silk with a few light spots, all edges gilt.

Repairs to the spine and one joint at head, a few scattered internal spots.

Autograph manuscript signed of Victor Hugo’s “Ballade du fou,” sung by the jester Elespuru in his play Cromwell (IV, 1). Two pages on a folded leaf backed with green glazed paper.

Exceptional autograph manuscript of Victor Hugo’s most celebrated poetic song, performed by the jester Elespuru in his resounding drama Cromwell.

Both grotesque and exalted, this piece embodies the freedom of Romantic drama championed by Hugo in the play’s famous preface: as noted by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, this song “is the only passage in the play as equally famous as its preface”.

Illustrated edition with 13 colour plates on brown paper by Arthur Rackham tipped in with captioned tissue guards, together with 14 black-and-white illustrations in the text by Rackham, including a frontispiece portrait of Alice, one of the very rare 20 copies on Japon, signed by Arthur Rackham on the limitation page, copy from the deluxe issue. A few name copies on the same paper were also issued.
Publisher’s full vellum binding, smooth spine lettered in gilt with a gilt illustration of the Cheshire Cat, upper cover stamped in gilt with the title and an illustration of two fantastic creatures, illustrated endpapers, top edge gilt. Occasional light foxing.
A handsome copy of the most sought-after of Rackham’s illustrated works, one of the exceedingly rare copies on Japon paper.

Provenance: manuscript ex-libris on the half-title of Maurice Feuillet, celebrated press illustrator, notably for major legal trials, as well as art critic and founder of the 'Figaro artistique'. Feuillet remains renowned for his courtroom sketches during the trials of Émile Zola in 1898 and Alfred Dreyfus in 1899.

First edition, printed on thick wove paper.
Bound in contemporary half brown shagreen, smooth spines decorated with black typographic motifs, marbled paper boards, hand-marbled endpapers and pastedowns, modern slipcase edged in brown morocco with matching marbled paper sides and olive-green felt lining. 
Some occasional foxing, the note "Henri Beyle" in black ink at the upper corner of the title page of the first volume, final catalogue leaf present at the end of the second volume, small corner restorations to four leaves of the first volume.
"Very rare and extremely sought after. Usually quite simply bound at the time. Often foxed" (Clouzot). "This work is of great rarity in fine condition" (Carteret).
A handsome and very rare copy, large-margined and attractively bound at the time, of this masterpiece by Stendhal—rarer still than Le Rouge et le Noir.

First edition on vélin d'Angoulême (laid paper), complete with all six condemned pieces, with the usual typographical errors.
Contemporary red half sheepskin binding, spine with four raised bands framed in gilt adorned with gilt fleurons, red percaline boards,  marbled endpapers , speckled edges.

First edition, one of 45 numbered copies on Holland paper, the deluxe issue.

Full chocolate-brown morocco binding, spine with five raised bands framed with black fillets, date gilt at foot, gilt rolls on the caps, marbled paper endpapers and doublures, gilt double fillet borders on the doublures, gilt fillets along the edges, original wrappers and spine preserved, all edges gilt, slipcase edged with matching chocolate morocco, sides in marbled paper, interior lined with grey felt. A splendid binding signed by Semet & Plumelle.

A very handsome copy, perfectly bound in full morocco by Semet & Plumelle.

Rare and sought-after first edition, first issue.

Includes the subscribers' list and the foreword, which were omitted when the remainder of this edition passed into the hands of another publisher, Dion-Lambert. It also retains the pagination error in volume two: page 164 instead of 364. With a letter from the author, bearing his autograph signature, written and dated 14 April 1839, in the hand of his secretary. One page written in black ink on a leaf. Slightly darkened at the upper edge, with occasional foxing, and the usual folds from postal handling.

Our copy is enriched with an exceptional, prophetic and macabre letter by François-René de Chateaubriand: "mais moi je suis mort, absolument mort et s'il me fallait écrire un mot dans un journal, j'aimerais mieux être enseveli à mille pieds sous terre." ["but I am dead, utterly dead, and if I were required to write a single word in a newspaper, I would rather be buried a thousand feet underground."]

Signed with the author’s faltering hand, this apparently unpublished letter was penned by his secretary: "Vous connaissez la main de [Hyacinthe] Pilorge que j'employe pour remplacer la mienne souffrante de la goutte" ["You will recognise the hand of [Hyacinthe] Pilorge, whom I employ to replace my own, suffering from gout,"] the author explains in the introduction to the letter.

Black half-morocco bindings, smooth spines with double gilt fillets and double blind-stamped compartments, black paper boards, slight superficial rubbing to some boards, marbled paper pastedowns and endpapers, sprinkled edges; contemporary bindings. Sparse foxing.

First edition of the third series of Andersen’s tales. Two parts in one volume, published respectively on 30 March and 23 November 1872, each bearing an inscription by Andersen. He mentions the first in his diary (H. C. Andersens dagbøger, vol. IX, p. 247) and the second is recorded by Henry Tuxen (Anderseniana, vol. 4, 1958-59, p. 155).

Red cloth half binding, smooth spine faded with gilt title and ruled in black, black cloth boards. First board with a slight lenghtwise crack, spine-ends and corners rubbed, small lack of material at the margin of the first board.

Rare collection of tales exceptionally inscribed twice by Hans Christian Andersen to his friend the celebrated dancer and choreographer Auguste Bournonville, called here “Balletdigter” (poet of ballet) in homage to his talent. The inscriptions appear on the half-title page of each part: "Vennen, Balletdigteren A. Bournonville fra hans Beundrer H.C. Andersen" [To the friend, the poet of ballet A. Bournonville from his admirer H.C. Andersen] and "Balletdigteren min geniale, trofaste Ven Hr. Balletmester Bournonville Hjerteligst H.C. Andersen" [To the poet of ballet, my brilliant and faithful friend the ballet-master Mr. Bournonville / Sincerely H.C. Andersen].

The dancer and ballet director of the Royal Danish Theatre remained one of Andersen’s greatest role-models: Andersen, who had aspired to be a dancer in his youth, but like many of his fairy-tale protagonists was born in “the wrong body” - relinquishing that career path, the now-famous storyteller made use of his writing talents for the stage, and collaborated on several occasions with Bournonville.

An exceptional and hitherto unpublished manuscript, complete in 775 pages, chronicling the journey of the Vicomte Edmond de Poncins through India (cited in Numa Broc, Asie, pp. 376–377, and Afrique, p. 263 (for his explorations of the Pamirs and Ethiopia), and in Thiébaud, pp. 755–756, (for his works on hunting).

This record extends from 12 September 1891, with embarkation at Marseille, through to 12 June 1892, the date of departure from Karachi bound for Marseille.

Contemporary 3/4 green morocco binding, spine in five compartments numerously framed in black with fleurons-gilt tooling, boards framed in black along the leather edges, marbled endpapers; author’s bookplate pasted to the upper pastedown; red top edge.

775 pp. (misnumbered ch. 1–567, 567–774), 1 unnumbered page, 2 unnumbered leaves of table, and a few remaining blank leaves.

Important, unpublished manuscript recounting the travels of the Vicomte Edmond de Poncins across India covering the period from 12 September 1891 (embarkation at Marseille) to 12 June 1892 (departure from Karachi for Marseille).June 1892 (departure from Karachi for Marseille).

Presented in the form of a journal, it is written in brown ink, in a cursive yet legible hand.

The text includes all of the author’s observations on the regions traversed, the routes taken and modes of transport, hunting expeditions, notable acquaintances, and his relations with servants, etc.; it also records that he took photographs during his excursions.

Departing from Marseille on 12 September 1891, Edmond de Poncins took passage on the Peï-Ho, a steamer belonging to the Messageries Maritimes. He travelled in the company of the Governor of Obock, on his way to assume office, and a British general who served as Inspector of Cavalry in India.

The route led via Port Said, Suez, Obock, and Aden. During the passage through the Red Sea, Poncins visited the engine room and conversed in Arabic with one of the stokers. On 23 September, at Aden, he transferred to the Seyne, a vessel of the same company, bound to cross the Indian Ocean. He arrived at Karachi on 29 September. The traveller left the steamer to board a sailing vessel bound for Bombay, where he arrived on 2 October. He remained there until the 8th, when he departed for Poona. On the 16th, he made an excursion to the Carlee Caves, a group of ancient Buddhist temples hewn into the rock. Back in Bombay the following day, he journeyed on to Pachora, whence he explored the Ajanta Caves, famed for their ancient Buddhist sanctuaries carved into the rock. He returned to Bombay on the 21st, proceeded to Mehmadabad the next day, and reached Kaira on the 24th. In the surrounding area, he hunted crocodiles and subsequently quail. On the 27th, he was in Ahmedabad, roughly 450 km north of Bombay, and two days later he arrived at Morvi, lying some 200 km to the east, continuing his travels across the region. Returning to Ahmedabad on 5 November, he went back to hunt in the environs of Kaira. On the 10th, he arrived at Abu Road, where he visited the temples of Mount Abu, before making his way back to Ahmedabad. He then began his journey across India towards Delhi and Calcutta, visiting Ajmere on 21 November, Chitor on the 23rd, and Udaipur on the 25th. On 3 December, he went bear hunting in the surrounding area. On the 7th, he reached Jaipur, and the following day he visited Amber Fort, which overlooks the city. On the 10th, he arrived at Alwar, and on the 12th proceeded to Delhi. Three days later, he visited Agra, before journeying into the Ganges Valley, reaching Cawnpore (Kanpur) on the 17th, Lucknoor (Lucknow) on the 18th, and Benares on 19 December. He arrived in Calcutta on 22 December 1891. He remained there until 4 January 1892, when he departed for an extended hunting expedition in the Sunderbans, a marshy region in the Ganges delta. On 10 February, he returned to Calcutta to prepare for his next expedition. He set out for Assam on 19 February 1892, a region in north-eastern India, lying in the Brahmaputra Valley at the frontier of Bhutan. The following day, he reached Goalundo (present-day Bangladesh), and on the 22nd, Jatrapur (Bangladesh), before embarking on a new hunt through the jungle atop a domesticated elephant. He arrived at Raimana (Assam, India) on 4 March. Over the ensuing days, he hunted large game - including buffalo, elephants, rhinoceroses, and tigers. On the 17th he killed a tiger cat, followed the next day by a doe and a stag, but the larger animals remained elusive. On 19 March, he suffered from heatstroke, yet continued hunting. On the 24th he reached Paglobat, continuing the next day to Dhubri in Assam, where a violent fever struck him down. Once recovered, he made a few more excursions and, on 8 April, left the region, reaching Calcutta on the 10th. On the 14th, he fell ill once more and was robbed by his servant, who was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. Poncins then left Calcutta to cross the Ganges plain: on 29 April he reached Cawnpore (Kanpur), which he had already visited on his outward journey, and on the 30th he stayed at Kalka. On 1 May he arrived at Simla, situated about 250 kilometres north of Delhi, on the foothills of the Himalayas. After an excursion to Amondah, he was again seized by fever and was forced to return to Kalka, from where he took the train, reaching Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan) on the 16th. From there, he made several excursions into the hills (Murree, Gulmay), but an outbreak of cholera forced him to leave the region. On 5 June he departed Rawalpindi by train and arrived at Lahore the next day. On 8 June he reached Karachi and prepared his belongings to embark on a vessel bound for Marseilles. The journal concludes on 12 June 1892, the date of his departure from Karachi.

Translated extracts: [16 October 1891, between Bombay and Poona, Maharashtra]: “Departure for the Caves of Carlee. Left at 6 a.m. with a tonga [a cart drawn by two ponies] which took me along the road opposite the path leading to the caves. Hired two coolies for my photographic equipment and my gun. We crossed a long plain of rice fields […]. The caves lie one-third up a mountain of 800 feet rising at the end of the plain […]. One passes through a small temple of Siva and stands before the great temple, whose entrance is most impressive […]. To the right and left, large sculpted elephants emerge from the rock up to mid-body; bas-reliefs depict gods with exaggerated forms, larger than life […]. The great hall is a marvel, both in its ensemble and in its details…” (pp. 53–55).

[25 October 1891, near Kaira, south of Ahmedabad, Gujarat]: “Left at 6 a.m. on camelback to hunt crocodiles. Covered 14 miles and reached a village below which the river makes a large, very deep bend. It is the Sabarmati. Shot a large crocodile at 150 metres on the sand. The bullet went straight; it struggled for a moment, then dived and was lost. About ten others in sight dived at the same time. Went down the river and fired at a small crocodile, 60 metres away, basking on a sand islet. It made a great leap and dived into a deep pool, which was red with blood within a few minutes. A native accompanying me did not dare to fetch it. Fired at two or three other swimming crocodiles, without apparent result. At 2 o’clock I returned to my starting point […]. Altogether I must have fired at fifteen and seen fifty in four or five hours…” (pp. 76-77).

[25 November 1891, Udaipur, Rajasthan]: “In the soft haze of the rising sun, the white city appeared, dominated by high walls and the splendid silhouette of the Maharana’s palace […]. Further on, a vast circle of rugged mountains with oddly shaped peaks, here and there marked by forts and stretches of defensive walls. Truly a land of savage feudalism. The Prime Minister’s son, to whom we had announced our arrival, came to fetch us by carriage at one o’clock, placing himself at our disposal. He is a young man of twenty to twenty-two, intelligent in appearance, speaks English well and is courteous. The Maharana is not in Udaipur, residing instead in a bungalow a few miles away on a hunting expedition […]. We shall, moreover, have the honour of being invited to one of H.R.H.’s hunts; in the meantime, we shall visit what there is to see in Udaipur…” (pp. 171–172).

[4 January 1892, West Bengal]: “Set out this morning from Calcutta for Mutlah or Canning. Arrived at 10 a.m. Found my boats. Crossing a country of rice fields, marshes, palms and coconut trees. The train stops at the end of the track, right on the riverbank. The tide is low and, to reach our boats, I have to be carried by my men, who sink up to their knees in a black, sticky, abominable mud […]. Here and there, some native boats. Few birds. By noon the two chimneys of the station disappear from view; ahead there is only the immense marsh. My men, who are Muslim, raised the anchor with a prayer […]. At 4 p.m. we stop at a cluster of huts unmarked on the map, called Fokai Hâttee. I send two men ashore to look for milk or meat. There is none. Meanwhile I photograph my boats, and a group of natives watching a juggler and a bear…” (pp. 291–292).

[1 March 1892, Brahmaputra Valley, Assam]: “In the afternoon my bullock cart [ox-drawn cart] arrived, along with an additional elephant sent by Mr Gordon. My party now consists definitively of three elephants, one bullock cart, seven men for the elephants, one for the oxen, and two for myself…”

[2 March]: “Departed at six in the morning on the second elephant, which I had yet to ride. We took the road to Kaïmana, then turned left into a jungle of tall burnt grasses, as high as the elephants […]. A very large animal was heard a few hundred paces ahead, crushing the grass. Halt. At the sound my mahout [driver] insisted it was a wild elephant, though the noise was identical to that of ours. The rhino passing below was less noisy. What should be done? The government forbids, under severe penalties, the killing of elephants […]. The undergrowth is so thick one could not see two metres; I cannot even see the head of my own. Moreover, wild elephants attack domestic elephants with fury…” (pp. 540–545).

A hunter and explorer, the Viscount Edmond de Montaigne de Poncins (1866–1937) undertook several journeys in Africa and Asia. After his stay in India (1891–1892), he travelled through Central Asia in 1893: departing from Samarkand (Uzbekistan), he crossed the Pamir and Hindu Kush mountains to reach Srinagar (Kashmir); for this journey he was awarded the silver medal of the Geographical Society in 1895. In 1897, he travelled with Prince Henri d’Orléans between Djibouti and Addis Ababa; in 1912, he explored East Africa, from Nairobi to Mount Kenya.

“Poncins is no scholar, but an intrepid traveller and a keen observer […]. Few French explorers have attained such heights in Central Asia…” (Numa Broc, Asie).

He is the author of Chasses et explorations dans la région des Pamirs (1897) and Notes sur le gros gibier de nos colonies (1913).
A precious manuscript, with a fine contemporary binding.
Provenance: Viscount de Poncins, with his engraved bookplate depicting a tent beside a baobab.

First edition for each volume.

Fine copy of Du côté de chez Swann in first edition, second printing, with all identifying points (front cover dated 1913, table of contents present, no publisher's catalogue at end); copy in first edition bearing the mention "quatrième édition" for À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (with the correct colophon dated November 30, 1918); although bearing the same colophon dated November 30, 1918, the 128 reimposed copies were not actually printed until a year later, together with the large paper copies of the Swann reissue; for the following 11 volumes, numbered copies on pur fil (wove paper), the only large paper copies apart from the reimposed ones.

The complete first edition of À la recherche du temps perdu comprises the first two volumes on ordinary paper with the particularities mentioned above, followed by deluxe copies for the subsequent volumes. These deluxe copies on pur fil are in the same format as the first two volumes.

Restorations with losses filled on the spine and boards of the first and second volumes, spine of third volume browned, small tears or slight losses of no consequence at foot of certain spines, rear board of fifth volume partially sunned, some foxing on fore-edge of sixth volume, manuscript ex-libris inscriptions in upper right corners of front cover and title page of first volume. This complete set of La Recherche comprises the following titles: Du côté de chez Swann, À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, Le Côté de Guermantes (2 volumes), Sodome et Gomorrhe (3 volumes), La Prisonnière (2 volumes), Albertine disparue (2 volumes), and Le Temps retrouvé (2 volumes).

Fine complete set, all volumes in first edition as published.

First edition.
Contemporary half red shagreen over marbled paper boards, (a few discreet repairs), spine in six compartments, date to foot, marbled paper-lined endpapers and pastedowns, covers preserved, top edge red.
A very handsome autograph inscription signed by Victor Hugo to Alphonse Daudet.
Mrs. Daudet's collection stamp to first endpaper.

Victor Hugo represented for Alphonse Daudet, as for the other writers of his generation, the incontestable master of the Pantheon of the arts. His benevolent attention runs through Daudet's work, often listed side by side with Rousseau, Byron, Sand and Delacroix.
If during Daudet's childhood and youth, Hugo, an exile of enormous stature in Guernsey, remained a distant ideal, "almost above humanity", his return to France allowed him finally to meet the master. Around 1875, just after his first works appeared, Alphonse and Julia Daudet were thus invited to Hugo's house; Hugo was living with Juliette Drouet at the time.
From then on, they become frequent visitors to the house right up to the poet's death. Hugo helped with the young Léon Daudet's education, his grandson Georges' best friend and, later, for a short while, Jeanne's husband.
In her Souvenirs d'un cercle littéraire [Memories of a Literary Circle], Julia Daudet talks of their friendship of ten years with "the idol of lyric France":
"I can see Victor Hugo at the end of his great table: the aged master, a little cut off, a little deaf, presiding with god-like silence, the little absences of a genius on the verge of immortality. His hair all white, his face colorful, and his eyes like an old lion's that would occasionally flash with ferocious bursts of force. He is listening to my husband and Catulle Mendès, between whom there is a very animated discussion on the subject of the youth and celebrity of famous men and their charm for women...During the debate, we moved through to the salon, with Hugo musing beside the fire, famous, omni-present and a demi-god, but perhaps still missing his youth a little, as Mme Drouet sleeps softly."
The friendship between this great Romantic writer and one of the masters of the nascent naturalist school is testimony to Hugo's sharpness who, even during his glory days, preserved a special and benevolent attention for modern literature, no matter how far removed it was from his own lyricism.

This inscription from Hugo to Daudet on a work considered - along with Le Pape [The Pope] and La Pitié suprême [The Supreme Compassion] - a "philosophical testament" by Henri Guillemin, resonates strongly, the passing of the writer's political and moral responsibilities to a devoted disciple.

Provenance: Alphonse Daudet, his sale at Sicklès (1990, IV, n°1200) then Philippe Zoummeroff's sale (2 Avril 2001).

An extract from Memories of a Literary Circle by Julia Daudet :
"How could I forget that first visit to his, in the rue de Clichy, in a modest apartment so out of proportion to his glory, to the image of his glory that we had, which would have filled entire palaces. He got up out of his chair beside the fire, opposite Madame Drouet, his old friend...I was shocked by how small he was but soon, after he had greeted me and begun talking to me, I felt him very big indeed, very intimidating. And this timidity that I felt then, I would always feel towards him, the result of my great admiration and respect, something akin to that for an absent god, that my parents had inculcated within me for inspired poets. I could never overcome that wobble in my voice whenever I would reply to his kind words, and I was shocked to hear women, over the course of almost ten years, when admitted to his presence, regale him with their personal matters and their everyday chatter.
That evening, when he had introduced me, all in a flutter, to Madame Drouet, she said to me with her most charming grace: 'This is the old people's bit, you know, and you're far too young for us. But Monsieur Victor Hugo will introduce you to his daughter-in-law, Madame Lockroy; only he is qualified to do so.'
So I was conducted to the other end of the room, of an average size, but which seemed to be cut in two by a table bearing a bronze elephant, most majestic - Chinese or Japanese, I think. In any case, it served to make two little most distinct groups which nonetheless communicated easily without blending one into the other.
At this moment of his return, Victor Hugo was feeling exulted and was full of stories which he told with an inexhaustible verve whenever politics did not invade his dinner table too much. And how graceful his welcome, what noble manners and what a fine grandfatherly smile under his hair, that I saw grow whiter and whiter as he approached eighty. All the poets used to come to the salon in the rue de Clichy, and later to the house in the Avenue d'Eylau. But was this change of scene really necessary? It seemed to be a step down in the health and then in the spirits of the grand old man. And yet, he always loved to host his friends and the welcome in this open house was not the least of its charms for, gathered around the table, garnished at one end with the Master's two grandchildren, the company still looked for direction from their host's eyes and he himself sometimes struck a vein of memories so vibrant, so wonderfully recounted, that we were all bowled over the entire evening. Mme Drouet grew quietly older beside him, covered by two bandanas whose aspect was a little faded and melodramatic, right up until the day where a merciless illness broke her delicate beauty and made her the suffering effigy painted by Bastien Lepage, who died under the same tortures. Towards the end, the Master would glance sadly at her empty plate and noble, ravaged face during these intimate dinners.
'Madame Drouet, you're not eating, you must eat, take heart.'
Eat! She was dying. Did he know it? Was the great old man, so strong and so hardy, trying to fool himself, as he saw his companion of fifty years go?
In the big living room, a handsome portrait by Bonnat hung, with a paternal attitude, and an immense bust by David presided. The little living room was decorated with striped and colored wallpaper, which seemed to have been chosen for Dona Sol. In the garden connected to the verandah by a platform of two steps, Leconte de Lisle, Meurice and Vacquerie, Paul de Saint-Victor, the smiling Banville reappeared, Flaubert and Goncourt talked, Mallarmé, Léon Cladel, François Coppée, Catulle Mendès, and Clovis Hugues, shadows in a vanished Eden. Then there were Léon Glaize, Gustave Rivet, Pierre Elzéar, and tiny Mme Michelet distributing roses at a party, as well as ambassadors, diplomats, the Emperor of Brasil, and painters, sculptors, and so many politicians I can't remember all their names!
These are my direct impressions of one of the soirees we attended, Alphonse Daudet and I, one snowy evening, when our horse stumbled three times during the trip over as we were crossing the Esplanade des Invalides:
I can see Victor Hugo at the end of his great table: the aged master, a little cut off, a little deaf, presiding with god-like silence, the little absences of a genius on the verge of immortality. His hair all white, his face colorful, and his eyes like an old lion's that would occasionally flash with ferocious bursts of force. He is listening to my husband and Catulle Mendès, between whom there is a very animated discussion on the subject of the youth and celebrity of famous men and their charm for women. Alphonse holds that in a salon full of all sorts of talented people of all ages a very young man, the unknown author, the overlooked poet will get female attention if he is handsome. Catulle Mendes answers that he would, firstly, remain unnoticed, and that all women went in for celebrity, which seems to me more correct. Fortunately, women not only have the eyes in their heads, but also the eyes of their souls and their hearts. For intellectual women, the looks of an artist or a great poet don't matter - it's the reflective aspect, the tormented features of a man who lives his emotions. They go for talent, to suffering that passes, and they hardly think about physical beauty. Now you could say that they seek out famous authors motivated by personal ambition, but the other feeling, that attracts them to tempting youths, seems to me even less respectable.
And I laugh at the pretention of these two charming debaters in labeling and analyzing us. Talking about 'women' is like talking about 'birds': there are so many different species and types, whose song and feathers are so completely different!
During the debate, we moved through to the salon, with Hugo musing beside the fire, famous, omni-present and a demi-god, but perhaps still missing his youth a little, as Mme Drouet sleeps softly. Her fair white hair covers her delicate head like the two wings of a dove, and the buttons of her blouse follow the pattern of the soft, almost resigned, breathing of an old woman sleeping.

It was soon after this evening that that great gathering took place in which all Paris marched past, on the Avenue d'Eylau, the windows of this little bedroom that was now home to a deathbed, in May 1885, full of roses and plainly furnished, as it is represented in the Victor Hugo Museum in a room in the poet's former apartment on the Place Royale.
Very evocative, this old corner of the Marais, especially if we consider that Victor Hugo wrote almost all his historical works there. We can picture the poet at work in the early morning hours, to which he kept, the high windows of the houses all identical and in the same style, stretching all the way around the square, guarding the memory of the tournaments, the duels, promenades and uprisings of several generations now vanished beneath these thick, ancient arcades, which keep no trace of fleeting humankind.
We had dinner at Victor Hugo's house the week before he died. He told us as we were coming in, more pale that usual, and tottering as he walked:
'I'll be going soon, I can feel it'. Then he squeezed Georges' shoulder: 'Without this one, I would have gone long ago.'
I will never forget his slightly solemn and prophetic tone - I was struck by a sadness and presentiment. I felt the dispersal of this unique centre of the world that could never come together again!"

Autograph postcard signed by Albert Einstein to Ludwig Hopf. 18 lines written verso and recto, address also in Einstein's handwriting. Postmarked June 21, 1910. 

Published in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 5: The Swiss Years: Correspondence, 1902-1914, Princeton University Press, 1993, n°218, p. 242.

An exceptional and highly aesthetic card from Albert Einstein to "the friend of the greatest geniuses of his time" - according to Schrödinger - mathematician and physicist Ludwig Hopf, who introduced Einstein to another 20^th-century genius: Carl Jung.
The master invites his pupil Hopf to a dinner party, whose guests include scientist Max Abraham, future great rival during Einstein's Zurich years and a fervent opponent of his theory of relativity.

The recipient Ludwig Hopf joined Einstein in 1910 as an assistant and student at his physics and kinetic theory seminars at the University of Zürich. They signed two fundamental papers on the statistical aspects of radiation and gave their names to the "Einstein-Hopf" velocity-dependent drag force. Their letter exchanges retrace the complex path of Einstein's work on relativity and gravitation, bearing witness to their great complicity and Hopf's invaluable contribution to the Master's research. A few months after writing the postcard, Hopf even found an error in Einstein's calculations of the derivatives of certain velocity components which Einstein corrected in a paper the following year. They also formed a musical duo – Hopf accompanied on the piano the Master's violin, performing pieces by great musical geniuses like Bach and Mozart.
With this card, Einstein invited his pupil and friend Hopf to dinner with Max Abraham, at the dawn of a major scientific controversy that would pit them against each other from 1911 onwards. Abraham's theory of special relativity failed to convince Einstein, who criticized its lack of observational verification and its failure to predict the gravitational curvature of light. In 1912, their dispute became public through scientific articles. Abraham never acknowledged the validity of Einstein's theory.

During their brilliant artistic and intellectual exchanges, Hopf undoubtedly succeeded where Freud had failed, as he declared to him in a letter: "I shall break with you if you boast of having converted Einstein to psychoanalysis. A long conversation I had with him a few years ago showed me that analysis was as hermetic to him as the theory of relativity can be to me" (Vienna, September 27, 1931). As a fervent supporter of psychoanalysis, Hopf is known to have introduced the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung to Einstein. Hopf and his teacher both left for Prague's Karl-Ferdinand University in 1911, where they met writer Franz Kafka and his friend Max Brod in Madame Fanta's salon.
With the rise of the Nazi regime, the fates of the two theoreticians were plagued by persecution and exile. Einstein first took refuge in Belgium, Hopf in Great Britain after his dismissal in 1934 from the University of Aachen because of his Jewish origins. They continued their prolific correspondence in the midst of the turmoil, Einstein suggesting to Hopf the opening of a university abroad for exiled German students. Hopf died shortly after his appointment as chair of Mathematics studies at Trinity College Dublin in July 1939.

A precious invitation from the great physicist to one of the final dinner gatherings of the "old school" of science embodied by Max Abraham, on the eve of the publication of the theory of general relativity which would overturn classical conceptions of space and time and propel Science into the 20th century.

Signed letter hand-written by Charles Baudelaire, written in paper pencil, addressed to his mother. Dry-stamped headed paper from the Grand Hôtel Voltaire, Faubourg Saint-Germain. Madame Aupick's address in Honfleur (Calvados) in the author's hand, as well as several postage stamps dated 13 and 14 July 1858. Some highlighting, crossing out and corrections by the author. Signs of a wax seal with Charles Baudelaire's initials in pencil, likely written by the author. A small section of paper from the second leaf has been removed, without affecting the text.
This letter was published for the first time in the Revue de Paris on 15 September 1917.
Former collection Armand Godoy, n° 102.
Precious document, testimony of a decisive moment in the poet's life : the reconcilliation with now widowed Aupick, this sacred mother “qui hante le cœur et l'esprit de son fils,” “who haunts the heart and spirit of her son.”

First edition, no copies on deluxe paper issued.

3/4 brown half morocco binding, spine with color restoration, five raised bands framed in black, gilt date at foot, boards, endpapers and pastedowns in wood-grain style marbled paper, covers and spine preserved, gilt edges, an elegant binding signed Alix.

Manuscript ex-libris in black ink and a discreet restoration to the upper right corner of the first endpaper.

« Hierbei sollst du meiner gedenken, denn alles habe ich ernstlich gemeint. R. W. »
[At this you shall remember me, for I have meant everything seriously].

First edition, one of 55 numbered copies on pure wove paper, the only deluxe paper issue.
Bound in half brown morocco, spines with five raised bands, gilt dates at foot, boards covered with abstract patterned paper, endleaves and doublures of brown paper, original wrappers and backstrips preserved, gilt edges, bindings signed by Thomas Boichot.
A precious copy of this foundational text of modern feminism.

Complete set of 115 copper-engraved plates with an additional plate (116 plates), all printed on either laid or wove paper, all hand-colored with watercolor. Two entirely different plates 39 follow each other, in first issue: "Les Titus et les cache-folies" was published in the 1817 and 1822 sets, and the other "La Politicomanie" appeared in 1827. This is the most complete series, which also includes the 11 new plates published from 1818 to 1822, numbered 105 to 115.

According to Vicaire, the plates were probably all printed between 1801 and 1822, and only the text preceding the plates was reprinted in 1827.

3/4 long-grained cherry half-morocco, smooth spine elaborately framed in gilt lentghwise, gilt tooled center of spine, gilt lettered title at head of spine framed in gilt, marbled boards, marbled paper endpapers and flyleaves. Minor brown spots are mainly confined to the 24 pp. of text, with very few on the plates, mainly on the margins and versos.

A rare and famous collection of costumes, genre and entertainment scenes from the French First Empire and Restoration eras, with very wide margins and magnificently hand-colored at the time. A veritable encyclopedia of thrills, pleasures and pageantry, published by Pierre de la Mésangère, leading fashion editor at the turn of the century. This copy includes two versions of plate 39, both of which are extremely scarce.
 

Celebrated edition entirely engraved both images and text, richly illustrated with 6 engraved titles, a frontispiece and an engraved half-title for volume I, together with 243 figures, 473 vignettes and tail-pieces engraved by Fessard. The illustration of the first three volumes is the work of Monnet, and in the last three by Fessard after Bardin, Bidauld, Caresme, Desrais, Houel, Kobell, Le Clerc, Leprince, Loutherbourg, and Meyer. The text is entirely engraved by Montulay and Drouet within decorative borders. 
Contemporary red morocco bindings, flat spines gilt in a lattice design with floral gilttooling, beige morocco volume and title labels, triple gilt fillet framing the boards, gilt fillet on the edges, gilt roll-tooled borders on the pastedowns, blue paper endleaves and doublures, gilt dentelle turn-ins, all edges gilt. Joints expertly restored.

A handsome copy, elegantly bound in contemporary red morocco with richly gilt-tooled spines, of this edition undertaken by Etienne Fessard, dedicated to the heirs to the kingdom or"enfants de France", the Duke of Berry, the Count of Provence, and the Count of Artois.

Long autograph letter by Stendhal, addressed to his sister Pauline, written in fine handwriting with black ink.
Address of Stendhal's father, where his sister resides, in Grenoble, with the stamp "n°51 Grande Armée." Red wax seal bearing Stendhal's coat of arms.
Several original folds, inherent to postal delivery. A paper loss due to the unsealing of the letter has been skillfully restored.
A very beautiful letter, filled with romantic passion, blending childhood nostalgia with sentimental tales, and foreshadowing The Red and the Black.

Second edition only one month after the first edition.
Spine lightly wrinkled, small signs of folding in the margins of the boards, a light mark on the second board.

Claude Couffon, a French specialist and translator of the major Spanish-speaking writers of the second half of the 20th century, translated Chronicle of a Death Foretold a few years later.
On the last page, below the colophon, Gabriel García Márquez specified an address in Barcelona, that of his famous literary agent for Spain: “c/o Agencia Carmen Ballcells Urgel 241, Barcelona, 11.”

Rightly considered as one of the most important works op the Spanish language, the novel by García Márquez, however, had difficult beginnings after a first refusal by the avant-garde Barcelona publisher Seix Barral: “This novel will not be successful [...], this novel is useless.”
García Márquez sent it from Mexico to the Argentinian publisher Francisco Porrúa who immediately perceived the power of this unknown Colombian writer: “It wasn't a question of getting to the end to find out if the novel could be published. The publication was already decided from the first line, in the first paragraph. I simply understood what any sensible publisher would have understood: that it was an exceptional work.”
Finished printing in May 1967, Cien Años de Soledad appeared in bookshops in June with 8,000 copies selling out in a few days. The second print on 30 June will have the same success, as will the editions that follow week after week. More than half a million copies were sold in three years.

Several copies were later inscribed by Gabriel García Márquez who over the years has become one of the most famous South American writers, translated into 25 languages. However, contemporary autograph inscriptions on the first prints are extremely rare, even more so to one of his French translators who will contribute largely to his international renown.

Edition published the same year as the first. Illustrated with a portrait of the author, three folding plates, a folding map of Longwood house and two folding maps.
Some foxing.

Full black calf bindings, smooth spines with gilt romantic motifs, boards with central motif in blind, boards ruled in gilt, a small restoration to the margin of the first volume's upper board, handmade endpapers and pastedowns, marbled edges, spine-ends ruled in gilt, contemporary romantic bindings.

Rare signed and inscribed copy to a veteran of the Napoleonic wars, on the title page of the first volume: "A Mr. Foucauld, ancien s. [sous] officier de la Grande Armée. Passy 19. 7bre 1840 par le Cte de Las Cases" [To Mr. Foucauld, former second officer of the French Imperial Army. Passy 19. September 1840 by Count de Las Cases]

This inscription by the famous memorialist dates from the year Napoleon's mortal remains were returned to France, a few days before the Belle Poule frigate arrived in St. Helena to collect the coffin. Las Cases inscribed this copy at a turning point in history, as the world was once again turning to the remote island where the Emperor was exiled and buried. A second resurrection was to occur with the triumphant return of the imperial coffin:

"Frozen sky, pure sun. - Oh! shines in history,
Of the mournful imperial triumph torch!
May the people forever keep you in their memory,
Beautiful day like glory,
Cold as the grave" (Le Retour de l'Empereur, Victor Hugo).
The famous compilation of memories and confidences of Napoleon in exile was considered from the beginning to be a true masterpiece which had a lasting effect on Napoleonic legacy. Inscriptions by Las Cases on his most famous work are extremely rare. Las Cases wrote these words to another faithful servant of the Empire, at a time when one of the most important events in Napoleonic history was unfolding: the long voyage of so-called “Mission des cendres”. Las Cases was to be part of this expedition and abandoned due to ill health. He was replaced by his son who had shared his captivity in St Helena and was to publish, like his father, an account of his journey with the Emperor's remains. Las Cases did, however, attend the lavish funeral ceremony at the Invalides, true to his words from the Mémorial: "The heavens blessed my efforts by allowing me to go all the way".

An exceptional copy with a rare meaningful signed autograph inscription, on the iconic work at the origin of Napoleonic mythology, handsomely set in a contemporary binding with Romantic gilt motifs.

First edition of the most significant 19th-century scientific expedition to Iceland and Greenland.

A few light spots of foxing, otherwise a very good copy.

The 8 volumes of text include:

- History of the voyage, by Joseph-Paul Gaimard and Eugène Robert: 2 volumes with a portrait.

- History of Iceland, by Xavier Marmier: 1 volume.

- Icelandic Literature, by Xavier Marmier: 1 volume.

- Travel journal, by E. Mecquet: 1 volume.

- Zoology and medicine, by Eugène Robert: 1 volume, with folding table.

- Physics, by V. Lottin: 1 volume.

The 4 atlas volumes comprise:

- Mineralogy and geology, by Eugène Robert: 1 volume. Atlas:

- Mineralogy and geology: 1 volume with 36 black plates, some printed on China paper and mounted.

- Historical: 2 volumes with 150 lithographed plates and views in black, printed on China paper and mounted.

- Zoological, medical, and geographical: 1 volume with 51 plates, 35 of which are finely hand-colored (one plate present in both states: black and colored).

Bound in modern half blond calf, flat spines richly gilt with garlands and gilt and blind-stamped fillets, gilt decorative bands at foot of spines, red and dark green morocco spine labels, marbled paper boards, bindings signed by Laurenchet.

A very rare and attractive uniformly bound complete set.

First edition of this significant travel account, which retraces a major circumnavigation with key stopovers including Île Bourbon, Pondicherry, Singapore, Manila, Macao, Tourane, the Anambas Islands, Java, Surabaya, Port Jackson, Santiago, Valparaíso, and Rio de Janeiro.

The atlas volume contains 56 plates and maps, 13 of which are hand-colored (cf. Sabin 6875; Borba de Moraes I, 115; Ferguson 2236; Nissen ZBI, 483; British Museum (Natural History) II, 605).

The text volumes are bound in contemporary navy blue half calf, flat spines faded and decorated with gilt and blind-ruled fillets, gilt roll-tooled head- and tailpieces, marbled paper-covered boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, some rubbing to joints, edges and corners. Contemporary bindings.

The atlas volume is bound in contemporary violet half calf over marbled boards, flat spine with gilt and blind fillets, joints split at head and foot, gilt roll-tooled head- and tailpieces, marbled endpapers and pastedowns. Contemporary binding.

Some foxing, mainly affecting the text volumes; corners of the atlas worn; small tear without loss on p. 81 of vol. I.

The first edition, first printing, numbered in the press, with only 23 large paper copies on Hollande paper.
With a frontispiece portrait of Apollinaire by Picasso.
Discreet restorations to spine.

With a chemise of half red morocco over paper boards by Boichot, spine in six compartments, date to foot of spine, identical paper slipcase with red morocco edging.

 
Rare autograph inscription signed by Guillaume Apollinaire: “for Henri Ghéon whose poetry I am fond of, Guillaume Apollinaire”.
This copy also with five manuscript corrections by Apollinaire on pages 71, 77, 92, 110 and 189.
A good copy with a rare autograph inscription by the poet.

An autograph quatrain in black ink has been mounted on the verso of the frontispiece.

First edition with all first printing  features, one of the press copies.

Exceptional presentation copy inscribed by the author to the famous singer Yvette Guilbert, to whom Céline himself sang and offered one of his scandalous compositions, “Katika la putain,” [Katika the Whore] later renamed “À Nœud coulant” [With a Slipknot"] "A madame Yvette Guilbert en témoignage de ma profonde admiration. LFCéline.” 

Beneath Céline's inscription, the actor Fabrice Luchini added: “A Yvette Guilbert in memoriam. FLuchini” ; and on the half-title, actor Jean-François Balmer wrote in turn: “Merci en bon voyage. JFBalmer.”

With pasted-in entry tickets to their respective performances of Voyage au bout de la nuit at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées for Luchini, and at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre for Balmer.

First edition, one of 115 numbered copies on alfa paper, the only deluxe copies aside from 35 on pure thread.

Two small spots of foxing on the front cover, a discreet crease, a handsome copy as issued.
 
Rare and highly sought after in deluxe paper.

Complete set of the first quarter published (11 April-12-19 July 1886) of the symbolist journal La Vogue, the most important literary review of the late nineteenth century, containing the first printing of Rimbaud’s Illuminations. Issues 1 - 12, published weekly, were gathered under a quarterly wrapper and offered for sale in September 1886. No deluxe copies were issued for this first quarter of the journal, which had a very limited print run. Copy as published, spine restored, upper corner of the second cover lacking.

First appearance of Rimbaud’s Illuminations in the journal that served as a refuge for the poètes maudits and introduced Walt Whitman to the French readership.

Numerous contributions, including Paul Verlaine, Stéphane Mallarmé, Auguste Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, Charles Morice, Paul Adam, René Ghil, Jules Laforgue, Léo d’Orfer, Stendhal, Charles Henry, Stuart Merrill (translated by Mallarmé), Édouard Dujardin, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Félix Fénéon, Paul Bourget, Walt Whitman, Teodor de Wyzewa, Fedor Dostoevsky, Charles Vignier, Jacques Casanova de Seingalt.

Presented in a grey half-morocco clamshell case, smooth spine, marble-covered paper boards, marbled endpapers; case with grey morocco border, signed by Boichot.

Rare and highly sought-after first edition.
Contemporary binding in black half shagreen, flat spines richly decorated with gilt ornamental rolls, discreet and skilful restoration to the foot of one joint, black paper-covered boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, sprinkled edges. Discreet restoration to the lower hinge of the first volume.
Exceptionally clean copy, virtually free of foxing (a rarity according to Clouzot, who notes that most copies are usually heavily spotted).
Provenance: from the libraries of Saint-Germain (with printed crowned bookplate beneath the titles on the half-titles); Count de Bonvouloir (with his printed bookplate, Château de Magny in Calvados, above the title on the half-title of the second volume and above the next bookplate on an endpaper of the first volume); Charles-Albert Gigault de Crisonoy de Lyonne, with his bookplate mounted on a pastedown and endpaper; and more recently Max Brun, with his bookplate mounted on the front pastedown of the first volume.
Shelving labels mounted at the top of the rear pastedowns, minor losses to white paper and some corner stains on the endpapers.
A rare copy preserved in a strictly contemporary binding.

First edition, untrimmed with wide margins, very rare and highly sought-after (see Clouzot, "Le manuel du bibliophile français", p. 257).

Some occasional foxing.

Illustrated on the title pages of both volumes with two engraved vignettes by Porrêt. This copy contains the publisher’s notice leaf in the first volume and the author’s note leaf in the second volume.

Contemporary red half calf over marbled boards, calf corners, spines ruled in gilt with double gilt panels decorated with typographic gilt tooling, black calf title and volume labels, some minor rubbing to joints, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, lower corners a bit worn, bookplate pasted on the front pastedown of volume one, contemporary bindings.

A very rare and desirable copy, entirely untrimmed and preserved in a handsome contemporary binding - an even rarer feature. As noted by Clouzot: "les reliures de l'époque sont le plus souvent assez simples. Donc ne pas se montrer difficile sur la qualité."  ['Contemporary bindings are most often rather plain; one should not be overly particular regarding their quality.']

First edition, one of 515 copies.

The set of 8 issues is housed under two half-oasis black folders, smooth spines, gilt dates at foot, decorative paper boards, lined in green paper, set signed by Atelier Laurenchet.
Minor lacks of paper and tears to some spines and boards, some spines with slight restorations. The eighth issue has marginally soiled boards and a detached engraving, occasional foxing mainly affecting the sixth issue, part of the first issue being almost detached, some rare lacks of paper in the margins due to its innate fragility.

Exceptional illuminated manuscript of 35 poems by Stéphane Mallarmé, probably copied by Joris-Karl Huysmans on watermarked Hollande laid paper, after pre-first editions of the poems published in journals. Most of the poems are preceded by a separate title-page noting the source from which it is taken.

The manuscript includes a fine charcoal portrait of Mallarmé as a frontispiece by Charles Tichon, after a photographic portrait by Van Bosch. The portrait was published in the Mallarmé issue of Empreintes (Bruxelles, L’Écran du Monde, n° 10-11). Another version was published in 1889 (Caprice Revue, 2e année, n° 60). 

 two floral compositions in gouache and watercolor illustrating the poems Les Fleurs and Apparition, as well the calligraphed author's name as a title-page. Although unsigned, the illutrations are attributed to Louise or Marie Danse.

Bradel binding, contemporary cream silk boards with floral motif, two embroidered green silk markers with floral motif, gilt semis patternerd flyleaves and pastedowns, slightly faded red edges. Dampstains on the lower part of the lower board, rubbed corners, a few silk threads loosened on the spine, rubbed boards. 

Outstanding manuscript of 35 poems by Stéphane Mallarmé, written shortly before the first collected edition of his poetry of which only 47 copies were ever printed (Poésies, photolithographed, Revue indépendante, 1887). This carefully calligraphed collection is attributed to the hand of writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, a great admirer of the poet who is said to have given the manuscripts to his friend Jules Destrée.

First edition, this one the no. 1 of 25 numbered copies on Japon, most limited deluxe issue.

Bound in grey half morocco, smooth spine, marbled paper boards, mould-made endpapers, original wrappers preserved, pastedown bookplate, top edge gilt, contemporary binding signed by L. Pouillet.

A rare and handsome copy in an attractive contemporary binding.

Autograph letter signed by Honoré de Balzac to Sophie Koslowska. 4 pages in black ink on a bifolium.

Usual folds. Very small lacks of paper along the horizontal fold of the first leaf. Published in his Correspondance 1819-1850, II. Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1875, pp. 31-33.

A long, feverish letter by Balzac, a few days before the premiere of Les Ressources de Quinola at the Odéon theater. The writer writes to his close friend Sophie Kozlowska, daughter of Prince Kozlowski about the chaotic fi­nal preparations, and urges her to fill the theater with all of Paris's Russian high society.

Autograph letter in German signed by Rainer Maria Rilke to actress Else Hotop, to whom he writes under her stage name, Elya Maria Nevar. 2 1/2 pages written on a bifolium watermarked "Sackleinen". Autograph envelope enclosed, addressed to 'Else Hotop' bearing postmarks dated November 3, 1918.
Published in Freundschaft Mit Rainer Maria Rilke, 1946, p. 35.

A precious piece of Rilke's correspondence, reflecting the delights of an enchanted afternoon spent during WW1 with the actress Elya Nevar, one of his most fervent admirers.

First edition, one of 8 numbered copies on Chinese paper, the deluxe issue.
Bound in full red morocco, smooth spine, spine and boards decorated with a geometric design of black and gilt fillets representing interlaced mountain peaks in zigzag pattern, endpapers and pastedowns illustrated with an original lithograph signed in pencil by Germaine de Coster, following endpapers of red paper, original wrappers and spine preserved, top edge gilt; a very elegant contemporary binding signed by Hélène Dumas and Germaine de Coster.
This copy is further enriched with an original charcoal portrait of Jean Giono, signed by Robert Joël and mounted on a stub after the front wrapper.
A copy of the deluxe issue, magnificently bound in full morocco with a geometric design by Hélène Dumas, and with lithographed endpapers by Germaine de Coster.

Unpublished and signed autograph score by Camille Saint-Saëns. Two pages of handwritten music for solo voice and piano, on an oblong bifolium with twenty staves. Autograph inscription on the first page signed by Saint-Saëns, with his signature and date ("Nov. 1870") appearing again on the second page.
Trace of vertical fold, with a tiny tear along the fold, a small marginal tear on 1 cm of the first page, without damage to the manuscript.

An exceptional unpublished autograph manuscript of a Persian melody for voice and piano, composed by Camille Saint-Saëns during the Siege of Paris in November 1870, enriched with a autograph inscription: 'A Geneviève Bréton / Hommage de respectueux dévouement' [To Geneviève Bréton / In homage with respectful devotion], signed and dated on the second page 'Nov 1870 C. Saint Saëns'.

 
The lyrics of the piece were directly inspired by its dedicatee, the fiancée of the painter and tenor Henri Regnault, 'the most musical of all the painters' (Saint-Saëns, École buissonnière), (translation by Edwin Gile Rich), who was the first performer of several other Mélodies persanes.
 

Complete set of 13 original lithographs by Eugène Delacroix, in first edition, first issue with the letter, one of 20 copies on Chine paper pasted on laid paper:

"It was originally printed in a few proofs on Chine, the format of which exceeds the square line by one or two centimeters. They are highly sought-after, even though they bear the letter" (Robaut).

Bound in the original publisher's brown half-shagreen binding, title gilt stamped on first board, original first cover wrapper preserved. Small restored tear to the margin of the wrapper over 5 cm, sunned spine, joints and corners rubbed, scattered foxing and a dampstain to the lower part of the laid paper on which the lithographs are pasted on, without affecting the lithographs themselves.

Exceptional and rare set of original lithographs by Eugène Delacroix on Chine paper, illustrating Shakespeare's masterpiece.
A cornerstone of Romantic art, this series was "made at M. Delacroix's personal expense. Only 80 copies were printed, 60 on blanc and 20 on chine, and these were sold out at the time of the author's death" (Henri Béraldi).  It is now esteemed as Delacroix's most accomplished graphic undertaking, which took him more than ten years to achieve and generally considered to be one of the first modern livres de peintre.

First edition.
Half blue morocco shagreen, smooth spine, gilt date at foot of spine, marbled paper boards, contemporary binding.
Exceptionally inscribed by Emile Zola to the playwright and opera librettist Ludovic Halévy, with the autograph signatures of Guy de Maupassant, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Léon Hennique, Paul Alexis and Henri Céard on the first flyleaf.
Provenances: from the libraries of Ludovic Halévy and Marcel Lecomte, with their bookplates on front pastedown.
Our copy also includes, on a flyleaf, an autograph note by Ludovic Halévy: "See a letter by Guy de Maupassant at the end of the volume. L.H. Inscribed by the six authors of the volume. Ludovic Halévy." (Voir une lettre de Guy de Maupassant à la fin du volume. L.H. Envoi autographe des six auteurs du volume. Ludovic Halévy).
The reproduction of the famous letter sent by Guy de Maupassant to Halévy in 1880 is pasted onto six additional leaves at the end of the volume. It bears Halévy's penned note at the beginning and end of the letter: "Cette lettre est de 1880 / 1880." (Cette lettre est de 1880 / 1880). 

Set of 52 original plates, etched and enhanced with watercolours at the time, numbered 1 to 52, mounted in pairs under mats.
 
Leaves in red half calf slipcase (early 20th century), red shagreen boards.
The plates vary in size (10.8 x 17.6 cm to 28.1 x 18.8 cm) and paper stock, as was often the case with La Mésangère's publications. Unbound engraved title on a bifolium, printed separately, absent from most copies. It is replaced here by its identical reprint by Gosselin (1893-1903), on antique watermarked paper and bears the publisher's 'G' mark, characteristic of this reprint a century later. All the plates, however, are in their first edition, without the G mark added by Gosselin to the lower corners of the engravings, in the figure or the bowl, occasionally accompanied by a date.
 
Some foxing, a few rare engravings showing traces of pasted tabs on the reverse. Plate 42 restored without missing. A green stain in plate 11 probably due to the watercolour of the landscape. Twelve plates are trimmed to the plate mark: pl. 12 (12.7 x 19.2 cm), pl. 15 (12.4 x 18.7 cm), pl. 19 (11.9 x 19.8 cm), pl. 29 (11.9 x 19 cm), pl. 30 (12.5 x 19 cm), pl. 39 (12.1 x 18.4 cm), pl. 41 (12.5 x 19.1 cm), pl. 42 (12.5 x 19.1 cm), pl. 48 (11.9 x 18.3 cm), pl. 49 (12.9 x 19.9 cm), pl. 51 (12.5 x 18.4 cm), and pl. 52 (12 x 18.1 cm). Plate 37 is trimmed around the black border (10.8 x 17.6 cm). More pronounced foxing in the margins of plates 4, 28, 30, 31, 35, 44, 45, and 47.
 
A rare and precious complete suite of 52 original costume prints from the Directoire and First Empire periods.

Original autograph manuscript of a short story by Boris Vian, written in 1945 and published posthumously in the collection Le Loup-Garou in 1970.
Highly dense manuscript of 17 pages on 9 sheets, written in black ink with deletions and corrections, on perforated graph paper, dated “25.10.45” at the end of the text. One of the very rare manuscripts dated by the author.

Exceptional manuscript of Boris Vian’s first short story, written at the age of 25, just a few months after the Liberation.

“Yes I have sarcasm in my words, yes I do not know how to flatter and bend my back, how to beg in official salons […] I am nothing but a braying schemer, but if I had submitted - yes I would be comfortable."

Long autograph letter dated August 1896 and signed by Paul Gauguin to painter Daniel de Monfreid. Four pages in black ink on two lined sheets.
Small tears to margins not affecting the text, traces of folds inherent to sending.
In the midst of his descent into hell, abandoned in his Tahitian artificial paradise, Gauguin feels cursed : “Definitely, I was born under a bad star.”, he laments. His quest for primitive freedom leaves him in destitution and misery. Suffering agony, the painter sends paintings to one of his few supporters, his faithful friend Daniel de Monfreid - but writes the wrong address...
Published in Lettres de Paul Gauguin à Georges-Daniel de Monfreid, 1918, p. 146, n° XXIII; our letter reveals the name of Émile Schuffenecker, his friend and associate on the Paris stock exchange and then Pont-Aven - anonymized in the published version - whom Gauguin vilifies on numerous occasions in these pages.
This exceptional missive was written in Tahiti, where the painter had returned the previous year, bidding a final farewell to the old Europe. Gauguin had just come out from a stay in hospital in Papeete to treat his bruised legs following the beating he had received in Concarneau two years earlier for defending his muse, Annah the Javanese. The painter could not escape the aftermath of this altercation and suffered from a terrible purulent eczema on his leg, as well as syphilis, drowning his torments in alcohol. The letter is a perfect example of Gauguin's correspondence from the summer of 1896 which "smells of the fever that has seized a mind overheated by pain and lack of sleep" (David Haziot). In his confusion, the painter misspelt the address of Monfreid's studio at the Cité Fleurie, a famous chalet-like artists' residence where Gauguin had stayed : “I sent you a bunch of paintings last month. I'm afraid for them because it seems to me that I put 55 Bd Arago instead of 65” This mailing included his composition Eihaha Ohipa, painted in his studio in Punaauia and now kept at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Shipped via a naval officer - fees to be paid by Monfreid - the paintings did not arrive until November. Beyond his feverish fears, Gauguin delivers in these lines a true manifesto of his integrity as an artist - the perfect counterpart to his famous Christlike self-portrait Near Golgotha, painted around the same period. To him, his destiny and generosity are nothing short of Christ-like: “in the most difficult moments of my life, I more than shared with unfortunate people and never had any reward other than complete abandonment”. He had in fact helped display Schuffenecker's paintings in Impressionist exhibitions, saved his friend Laval from suicide and opened his purse to so many others. Instead of returning the favor, Schuffenecker prefers to feel sorry for himself: “Schuff really wrote me a crazy and unfair letter and I don't know what to answer because he is a sick mind [...] he would be more unhappy than me who has glory, strength and health. Let's talk about it! I'm good at making others jealous, he says”. Gauguin, who had always refused to make concessions and compromise, is finally betrayed by one of his closest relations, Schuffenecker, who becomes in the letter a true Judas Iscariot: “Schuff has just made a useless petition, I believe, for the State to come to my aid. This is the thing that can offend me the most. I'm asking friends to help me out for the time it takes to get back the money I'm owed, and their efforts to recover it, but begging the State was never my intention”. The painter reaches a point of no return, not only bruised in his flesh, but also in his self-esteem: “All my efforts to fight outside the official arena, the dignity I have strived for all my life, are now losing their character. From this day I am nothing but a braying schemer, but if I had submitted - yes I would be comfortable. Really, this is a sorrow that I didn't intend to have. Definitely, I was born under a bad star.” After this final abandonment, Gauguin gave free rein to his artistic and sensual frenzy in his Maison du Jouir in the Marquesas.
Suffering and penniless, Gauguin proclaims his distress and shattered pride - a Nabi Christ abandoning his cross, ready to fall into lust and the intoxication of the paintbrush.

First edition, one of 20 copies on Arches paper, most limited deluxe issue (tirage de tête).
Like all copies on Arches, it is wrapped in a double dust jacket in yellow and white, and bears the rare sanguine vignette drawn and engraved by Hans Bellmer.
Preface by Jean Paulhan.

Our copy is housed in a custom clamshell box featuring an original design signed by Julie Nadot.

Beautiful first edition copy of this masterpiece of erotic literature, in its most limited deluxe issue.

Complete autograph manuscript dat­ed and signed of the article “Note sur la Solution du problème monétaire an­glo-indien”. 5 pages in black ink on a leaf and a bifolium; 4th page signed and dated: “Léon Walras Vers chez les Blancs sur Lausanne, 3 juillet 1887”. The 5th page was added later and includes numerous autograph corrections and added remarks.
◇ Autograph manuscript of the re­viewed version of the last page. A page dated and signed “Léon Walras Vers chez les Blancs sur Lausanne, juillet 1887.”
◇ Autograph manuscript with the economist's calculations, 4 pages on 2 leaves.
◇ Autograph manuscript of the English translation for the last part, a page writ­ten by Walras on the verso of an enve­lope addressed to him.
◇ Typescript of the transcription by William Jaffé, typed on 4 leaves of thin paper with corrections and crossed out sections by Jaffé.
◇ Note on the solution of the Anglo-in­dian monetary problem. Two copies of the proofs, one twice signed by Walras with numerous autograph corrections and notes by Walras.
◇ “Note sur la solution du problème monétaire anglo-indien”, offprint of the Revue d'économie politique, Novem­ber-December 1887. A sizable tear not without lack of text.
Unique set of manuscripts, typescripts, translations, corrected proofs and offprints of one of Léon Walras' first forays into international economics. This work helped the economist gain recognition among English-speaking peers at a time when their language was becoming the official scientific standard instead of French.

“L. Walras [was] one of the first to recommend the use of a price index to guide monetary policy. Its multi­ple standard provides the information that determines interventions intended to eliminate variations in the value of money. This multiple standard is noth­ing more than a price index used for specific purposes. The usefulness of such an index, which was far from uni­versally accepted at the time when L. Walras demonstrated its usefulness, is now recognized.” (Jacoud Gilles. “Sta­bilité monétaire et régulation étatique dans l'analyse de Léon Walras” in Revue économique)

Manuscript pages from ‘Conversations with Professor Y', n.p. [Meudon] n.d. [1954], various sizes (from 10x21 cm to 27x21 cm), 34 sheets.
Autograph manuscript by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 34 sheets of various sizes, written in blue and sometimes pink ballpoint pen. Some of the pages are numbered by Céline at top left. The last folio numbered 159 is signed by the writer at the bottom.
Two leaves contain previously unpublished passages: the first, a few lines long, refers to the Professeur. The second leaf numbered 136 features another full-page text on the verso which we did not find in the ‘Professeur Y' or in any of the published works of Céline. Céline refers in this unpublished passage to article 75 of the penal code condemning to the death penalty any French citizen found guilty of intelligence with the enemy. It also mentions a certain "Me Johann Niels Borggensen" no doubt a pseudonym for his lawyer Thorvald Mikkelsen: "...supposedly to protect me from police curiosity! holy cow! he was having a ball...when you've got the warrant up your arse (crossed out: article 75), anyone can do what they like with you! what a joke! we can do what we like with you...it wouldn't have been Borggensen, perhaps someone else would have been worse...give me article 75, and I'll put the whole of France in a Mouse hole for you! and Germany with it! and England, such a nag, and Europe with it! no bomb needed! H ! Y ! Z ! I'll make you fit the atom into a..."
Important set of working manuscripts bearing witness to the writing of ‘Conversations with Professor Y' Céline's true Ars poetica.
Since the first part of ‘Féerie pour une autre fois' [Fable for Another Time] was not as successful as expected, Céline wanted to give the release of the second part - Normance - as much publicity as possible and restore his reputation after his years of exile in Germany and Denmark. Instead of writing the usual promotional note (prière d'insérer) – he suggested to publisher Gaston Gallimard this eulogy written in the style of an imaginary interview between himself and Professor Y alias Colonel Réséda, a prostatic old man. This zany "interviouwe" was published in several parts in the Nouvelle Revue française in 1954, and the finished work through Éditions Gallimard the following year. Céline speaks fervently of his style and his conception of literature, and vehemently criticizes the world of letters and public taste. Unlike Céline's other works, the genesis of this text crucial to the understanding of his oeuvre is poorly documented and its manuscripts are rare. The Pléiade edition of Celinian novels contains only a few pages of an earlier version very close to the published text.
This set of pages covering every passage of the text, contains both heavily crossed-out sheets and neatly rewritten notes. It bears witness to the different stages of the writer's work: drafting an initial sheet, crossing out and rewriting on the same page, then transcribing short passages on separate notes. The last page of the text is extensively crossed out and rewritten, resulting in a slightly different version of the published version.
The manuscript also contains the famous metaphor of the metro, typical of the writer's emotive style compared here to the "dry language" of his peers: "Did you see? Have you noticed? All caught up in my metro!... what do I leave on the surface?... the worst rubbish in cinema!... foreign languages then!... translations!... retranslations of our worst rubbish that they use for their "parlants" [talking pictures], superb foreign languages!... in addition to the psychology! the psychological mumbo jumbo!... all the crap. [...] Me, it's something else! me, I'm much more brutal! me, I capture all the emotion!... all the emotion on the surface! all at once! I decide! I stick it in the metro! my metro! all the other writers are dead! and they have no idea!"

Extremely important edition, comprising a large number of works appearing here in their first edition. The complete set of these 27 volumes is rare (Clouzot). The titles present in first edition are: Mattea, Lettres d’un Voyageur, La Dernière Aldini, Les Maîtres mosaïstes, L’Uscoque, Spiridion, Les Sept Cordes de la lyre, Gabriel, Pauline, and Un hiver à Majorque.
Illustrated with a portrait of the author at the head of the first volume.

Bound in contemporary half brown sheep, spines uniformly faded, with four raised bands decorated with double gilt panels, double gilt fillets at head and foot, marbled-paper boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, marbled edges, a few very lightly rubbed corners, contemporary bindings. Some occasional foxing, a light dampstain affecting the final leaves of the twenty-first volume.

A very rare complete set, in contemporary bindings.

Extremely rare autograph letter signed « Restif Labretone » addressed to Citoyenne Fontaine. Three pages written in black ink on a double sheet of laid paper. Remains of a wax seal, folds inherent to mailing. 
This letter was published, with some inaccuracies, in Lettres inédites de Restif de Labretone by V. Forest and É. Grimaud, 1883.

The set of largely unpublished autograph poems by Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac is brought together by the Count in a collection entitled Le Dernier Pli des neuf voiles, whose composition extends from his very first collection (Les Chauves-Souris, 1892) to his last trilogy (Offrandes, 1915).

Set of 620 autograph leaves. 532 unpublished, first draught, handwritten on the recto and numbered in pencil, preserved in 3 chemises in half red contemporary morocco, red morocco labels with gilt author and title; the poems are then placed in the chemises with a handwritten title and a number for publication. According to a note from the author, “the differences in ink have no meaning, mere change of copy”. Rare pages from the hand of his secretary Henri Pinard: p. 20 of “Huitième voile” and p. 29 of “Neuvième voile”. 23 pages present the printed or typewritten texts of the poems and are enriched with Montesquiou's handwritten corrections.

A set of printed proofs are found at the top of the first chemise, as well as a pencil tracing after Aubrey Beardsley drawn by the author and accompanied by his handwritten indications.

Complete run of the first twenty years of the newspaper Libération, founded in 1973 by Jean-Paul Sartre, Serge July, Philippe Gavi, Bernard Lallement and Jean-Claude Vernier.

6,200 issues in pristine condition (never opened).

This unique collection comprises 6,200 issues of Libération in impeccable condition (never opened), and is absolutely complete – including all the “numéros zéros”, promotional issues, special reports, thematic supplements (including the entire series of the celebrated “Sandwich” issues), and the commemorative twentieth anniversary album – from Monday 5 February 1973 to Monday 3 January 1994.  
The collection is offered with its custom-made display unit (2.60 m high, 4.20 m wide, and 50 cm deep). It consists of 35 stackable compartments, each measuring 84 x 36.5 x 50 cm, each housing two sliding drawers. Each drawer holds approximately one hundred issues of the newspaper.
 
Provenance: Frédéric Fredj Collection.

Exceptional complete autograph manuscript of Ravachol’s true last testament — largely unpublished — unknown in this form, preceding its rewriting by a third party for publication in the press. A unique testimony to the genuine thought of the anarchist icon.
 
Four-page lined quarto manuscript, entirely written in black ink and signed twice “Konigstein Ravachol” at the foot of each sheet. Pencil corrections within the text, possibly in the hand of his lawyer. Some horizontal folds and very minor marginal tears, without loss.
Written in his prison cell during the second Montbrison trial that led to his death sentence, this text, hastily penned, without punctuation or capital letters, and in naïve spelling, was meant to be delivered orally by Ravachol during the hearing.
 
“Ravachol was dead set on putting in his two cents for the defence, not to defend himself, but to explain. No luck, dammit! Four words in and the judge cut him off. His statement isn’t lost, by Jove!” (Émile Pouget, in Père Peinard, July 3–10, 1892).
This self-styled Rocambole of anarchism was not allowed to read his statement aloud, but he handed it to his lawyer Maître Lagasse, and by June 23 the forbidden text appeared in the conservative newspaper Le Temps.
This first publication was so faithful to the original that it preserved the author's eccentric spelling — a fidelity that Émile Pouget would ironically criticise in the Père Peinard issue of July 3, 1892, one week before Ravachol’s execution: “Le Temps, that opportunist bedsheet, printed it as is. Like a true Jesuit, it even printed it too true. Ravachol had written the thing for himself; he knew how to read it — but there wasn’t a word of correct spelling, seeing as he knew about spelling as much as he knew about cabbage farming. Le Temps printed the thing without changing a line, so it’s practically unreadable [...]. That’s exactly what the bastards wanted, dammit! [...] I’m reprinting it below, without changing a word, just fixing the spelling.”
 
That same July 3 issue of Père Peinard included a corrected version — orthographically — of the statement initially published in Le Temps.
This dual publication, combined with Ravachol’s defiant bearing before the guillotine, had a powerful effect on public opinion. Until then, even anarchist publications had kept a certain distance from this provocative criminal, suspected of using the anarchist cause for personal gain. But following his execution, the testament was quickly reproduced in other newspapers, and Ravachol’s final cry of revolt soon became a genuine anarchist anthem among libertarians worldwide.
However, the version circulated in the press — the only known version until now, the original manuscript having disappeared — differs markedly from the manuscript in our possession.
Indeed, the style was lightly polished, several turns of phrase refined, and, most significantly, entire passages were excised, including the conclusion paragraph, which was fully replaced.
 
Our manuscript, with its crossings-out and revisions, is likely the original version of this political testament. Written in a single burst, in dense handwriting, without punctuation or paragraph breaks, it includes two lengthy sections expressing concerns for public health that are entirely absent from the published version.
The first is a third of a page-long passage about the “dangerous ingredients” added to bread: “no longer needing money to live, there’d be no fear of bakers adding dangerous ingredients to bread to make it look better or heavier, since it wouldn’t profit them, and they’d have, like everyone else and by the same means, access to what they needed for their work and existence. There’d be no need to check whether the bread weighs right, if the money is counterfeit, or if the bill is correct.”
The second, nearly a full page long, concerns the silk-dyeing industry in which Ravachol had worked: “If one reflects attentively on all the wasted materials and the energy required to produce them, it becomes clear that all that labour was for nothing — to produce chemicals and fix them on silk, which then gets burned by the overload of ingredients dangerous to workers and turns the silk into something unsafe to touch or wear, especially from the dust released when these chemicals dry.”
The length of these passages — and their absence from the printed version — indicates their importance to the author and profoundly alters the discourse’s reception.
 
Unlike the well-known version, this manuscript focuses on individual well-being and public health. More importantly, it draws on the personal experience of its author — his background as a silk worker — which formed the bedrock of Ravachol’s political awakening. The only other known manuscript by him (now lost, but transcribed in the republican newspaper L’Écho de Lyon) also featured a digression on silk-making and its effects on worker health.
 
Yet the published speech makes no mention of this formative occupation, which concludes the original manuscript. Instead, a prosaic paragraph is replaced with a strikingly eloquent plea whose polished style and rhetorical flourish break entirely with the rest of the speech — now linked only by Ravachol’s peculiar spelling.
“Yes, I repeat: society creates criminals, and you jurors…”; “I am just an uneducated worker; but because I have lived the life of the wretched, I feel the injustice of your repressive laws more keenly than any wealthy bourgeois.”; “Judge me, gentlemen of the jury, but if you have understood me, then in judging me, you judge all the wretched.”
 
Powerful rhetoric, and a grandiloquent finale in which one struggles to recognise the oral style of a worker whose only other fully published text — his Memoirs, dictated to his guards on the evening of March 30, 1892 — ends as abruptly and unceremoniously as our manuscript.
This soaring conclusion in praise of anarchism — for which no manuscript trace exists, and which is wholly absent even in outline from our version — is, beyond doubt, apocryphal.
Given that the first publication appeared in a conservative newspaper, it is unlikely that the journalist authored it. It is far more probable that the version sent to the press was revised and polished by Ravachol’s lawyer, Maître Louis Lagasse — an engaged legal advocate for several anarchist newspapers and future Radical-Socialist deputy.
 
Our manuscript thus sheds light on the ideological reframing of Ravachol’s message — not a betrayal, but a careful recasting within a more intellectual framework. The appropriation of this man, still the day before vilified as corrupting the anarchist cause, proved a complete success. He became an icon of defiance and independence, celebrated in song, sanctified in novels, idolised by fighters, and even institutionalised — his name becoming, in Walloon, a common noun.
Alongside Proudhon and Bakunin, the grand theorists of anarchy, there was lacking a figure of action — someone who embraced the violence at the core of nihilist ideology. Through this extraordinary declaration, Ravachol became that long-awaited martyr.
 
It is doubtful whether the authentic version of Ravachol’s speech, as we reveal it today, would have had such an impact — especially when, as Émile Pouget noted about its first appearance, “you’ve got to bust your brains to catch the meaning.” But he added slyly: “Those stuffed-shirt bourgeois think you have to spell right to have ideas in your head.”
Indeed, it would be presumptuous to claim that Ravachol’s reputation was usurped by the pen of a clever ideologue. The original manuscript, while revealing the fabrication, also highlights the genuine depth of Ravachol’s ideas and the roots of his revolt. Every notion polished or reworded by the lawyer is, albeit in rougher form, present in the manuscript.
 
For Ravachol, misery and deprivation drive the desperate to crime. From the outset, he holds accountable “society, which by its organisation sets people in constant conflict with one another, [and] is solely responsible.”
In response, the justice system, he argues, treats not the causes but the consequences of poverty: “Perhaps, in time, people will understand that the anarchists are right when they say that to achieve moral and physical peace, we must eliminate the causes that breed crime and criminals. [...] Well, gentlemen, there are no more criminals to judge, only the causes of crime to eradicate.”
This defence of anarchist violence is not gratuitous: despite his limited writing ability, Ravachol outlines a reform and proposes a utopian vision based on social justice: “In creating the Code, legislators forgot that they were not attacking the causes but merely the effects, and thus were not eliminating crime. [...] It would suffice to build a new society where all is held in common, and where each, producing according to ability and strength, could consume according to need.”
And in denouncing social misery, Ravachol’s original text needed no reworking by his lawyer: “Do those who have more than enough care whether others lack the essentials? A few will offer small help, but it’s negligible and cannot relieve all those in need — who will die prematurely due to all kinds of deprivation, or choose suicide to escape a miserable life, to avoid enduring the torments of hunger, countless humiliations, with no hope of relief.”
Stripped of rhetorical embellishment, this moving manuscript reveals the preoccupations of a man condemned to die. Death is omnipresent — both of criminals driven by need, and of the impoverished who labour to exhaustion. The rapid scrawl, lack of punctuation, and breathless phrasing convey the urgency of a final testament: an ink-drenched gasp in which the condemned man tries to explain his actions and summarize his struggle. There is no pause for the reader — the four pages are filled to the last line, and Ravachol, as if to stand by every word or fearing he would not finish, signs each sheet.
 
A previously unpublished testimony from Ravachol — who stole and killed to survive — this testament reclaims his thought in all its authenticity. Here, we see the final words of an ordinary man, driven by a real fight for justice — far removed from both the anarchist-Christ image and the criminal-Judas who hijacked the libertarian cause.
 
The man who emerges from this crucial document is certainly no orator. But his speech — twice censored, by judge and lawyer — reveals humanist concerns likely too advanced for his time. At the height of the industrial revolution, he denounces not only poverty and the unequal distribution of wealth, but also the dangers of industrial chemistry for the health of the working class.
 
Behind the ideologue and utopian Ravachol, this unpublished manuscript reveals François Claudius Koënigstein — more modest in tone but more visionary in thought — a forerunner of the ecological and public health challenges of the future.
 
A powerful last testament to human dignity.

Third edition after the original published in Bordeaux in 1593 and a second Parisian edition in 1594. The copy mentions the second edition because it is the second to be published in Bordeaux.
Extremely rare handwritten presentation signed by the author on the page of the endpaper: “Pour Monsieur de Rives en memoire de moy. A Caors ce iiij [4] may 1595. Charron.” “For Monseiur de Rives in memory of me. In Caors this iiij [4] May 1595. Charron.” It is, without doubt, about Jean III de Rieu, Lord of Rives, who belonged to the family of Antoine Hébrard de Saint-Sulpice, bishop of Cahors. Pierre Charron had been called theological by this same bishop of Cahors and became his curate for six years.
Bound in calf vellum with contemporary yapp edges, blank spine.
Extensive yellowing of the endpaper page until page 30, then lessening, in the middle of the page throughout the first part and until page 120 of the second part. This yellowing resumes from page 760 until the end.
Pierre Charron's first writing, who, in this controversial work regarding Protestantism, develops three great “vérités” “truths”: religion is necessary, Christianity is revealed and only the Roman Church is the true Church. It is this last point in particular that the author tries to demonstrate. This third part is so important that it has its own title page and takes up two-thirds of the book.
In Bordeaux, Pierre Charron met Montaigne whose ideas spread through his works and his thoughts. They bonded with such a deep friendship that Montaigne designated Charron as heir to his house coat of arms.
The handwritten ex-donos or presentations of the great humanists of the 16th century are an exceptional rarity.

First edition, of which only 500 copies were issued. With an etched frontispiece portrait of Théophile Gautier by Emile Thérond.

With a substantial prefatory letter by Victor Hugo.

Red morocco binding, gilt date at the foot of spine, marbled endpapers, Baudelairian ex-libris from Renée Cortot's collection glued on the first endpaper, wrappers preserved, top edge gilt.
Pale foxing affecting the first and last leaves, beautiful copy perfectly set.
Rare handwritten inscription signed by Charles Baudelaire: “ à mon ami Paul Meurice. Ch. Baudelaire. ” (“To my friend Paul Meurice. Ch. Baudelaire.”)
An autograph ex-dono slip by Victor Hugo, addressed to Paul Meurice, has been added to this copy by ourselves and mounted on a guard. This slip, which was doubtless never used, had nevertheless been prepared, along with several others, by Victor Hugo in order to present his friend with a copy of his works published in Paris during his exile. If History did not allow Hugo to send this volume to Meurice, this presentation note, hitherto unused, could not, in our view, be more fittingly associated.

Provenance: Paul Meurice, then Alfred and Renée Cortot.

First edition, printed on vélin d'Angoulême paper, with the usual misprints and including the six condemned poems, one of the few copies given to the author and “intended for friends who do not deliver literary services”.
Full emerald morocco binding, signed by Marius Michel, original wrappers preserved.

Exceptional inscription to a childhood friend, banker and intellectual, one of the rare contemporary inscriptions that were not motivated by judicial necessity or editorial interests.
Indeed, even the few examples on papier hollande were largely devoted to strategic gifts in order to counter or reduce the wrath of justice that, in June 1857, had not yet returned its decision. Poulet-Malassis will hold a bitter memory of it: “Baudelaire got his hands on all thick paper copies and addressed them to more or less influential people as a means of corruption. Since they have not got him out of trouble, I believe he would do well to ask for them back.”
Baudelaire's correspondence makes it possible to define quite precisely the different types of inscriptions the poet made on the publication of his collection. He himself sent a list to de Broise to mention those to whom the press deliveries were dedicated, mainly possible judicial intercessors and influential literary critics. The poet then requires “twenty-five [copies] on ordinary paper, intended for friends who do not deliver literary services.” A letter to his mother tells us that he only got twenty. Some of them were sent in June 1857 to his friends, including one for Louis-Ludovic Tenré. Others were saved by the poet or offered late like the ones for Achille Bourdilliat and Jules de Saint-Félix.
If Tenré, this childhood friend whom Baudelaire has just found again in December 1856, is honored with one of the poet's rare personal copies of the Fleurs du mal publication, the three misprints he immediately noticed having been carefully corrected by hand, it is not on account of a service delivered or in anticipation of an immediate benefit. However, as always with Baudelaire, neither did he send his masterpiece to his boarding companion from Louis-le-Grand school as a simple “reminder of good friendship.”
As early as 1848, Louis-Ludovic Tenré took over from his father, the publisher Louis Tenré, who, like other major publishers, moved into investment, providing loans and discounts exclusively for those in the book industry. These bookseller-bankers played a key role in the fragile publishing economy and contributed to the extreme diversity of literary production in the nineteenth century, supporting the activities of small but bold publishers and liquidating other major judicial clashes.
In December 1856, Baudelaire tells Poulet-Malassis that he had deposited an expired banknote with this “old school mate,” which Tenré, out of friendship, agreed to accept. It was the initial advance for “the printing of one thousand copies [of a collection] of verses entitled Les Fleurs du Mal.” With this copy hot off the presses, Baudelaire then offers Tenré the precious result of the work discounted by his new banker. It is the beginning of a long financial relationship. Amongst all of Baudelaire's discounters, Louis-Ludovic Tenré will be the poet's favorite and the only one to whom an autographed work will be sent.
Nicolas Stokopf, in his work Les Patrons du Second Empire, banquiers et financiers parisiens, dedicates a chapter to Louis-Ludovic Tenré and evokes the privileged relationship between the poet and this unusual and scholarly financier, Paraguay consul and Latin America specialist, also the author of a significant work, Les états américains, published for the 1867 Exposition Universelle, of which he was a commissioner.
Even the poet's countless financial hazards will never cause lasting damage to their agreement. The trust this publisher's son he puts in Baudelaire is down to Tenré's interest in literature, as is evidenced by this excellently preserved copy given to him by Baudelaire. Quoted many times in his correspondence, and in his “carnet” – a kind of poetic diary written between 1861 and 1863 – Louis-Ludovic Tenré quickly became the main financial interlocutor for the poet whose life is, nevertheless, affected by the fear of his creditors.
“There is an astounding incoherence between Baudelaire's blinding intelligence and the chaos of his material life. He spends his time in his correspondence chasing money, his letters are almost exclusively about that. He is incapable of managing a budget of 200 francs per month and is in debt everywhere, even though he is not entitled to it, since he is under guardianship. Worse still: his annuity serves him only to pay the interest on the loans he takes out at very high rates. It is a vicious circle: he himself digs his own financial black hole.” (Baudelaire, Marie-Christine Natta).
The 1857 signed copies of Fleurs du Mal are amongst the most prestigious works and have for a long time had a prominent place in major private collections (Marquis du Bourg de Bozas, Jacques Doucet, Sacha Guitry, Pierre Berès, Colonel Sickles, Pierre Bergé, Bernard Loliée, Pierre Leroy, Jean Bonna, etc.).
This work's utmost importance in the history of literature, well beyond French literature, as well as the particular history of its publication, have contributed to the early interest in the first edition and even more so for the rare copies given out by the author.
In 1860, during the auction of all of Custine's property, who died in August 1857, the poems of a salacious poet dedicated to a writer of poor moral standards were little appreciated. However, by 1865, Baudelaire himself states that “for two years we have been asking everywhere [Les Fleurs du Mal], and in sales, they make quite a lot”. And by 1873 and 1874, the Gautier and Daumier library sales mention their precious copies and “the handwritten ex-dono” with which they are adorned.
Since then, the inscribed copies have been described and referenced, which has enabled bibliographers to count and allocate 55 copies of the first edition of Fleurs du Mal that were handed out by Baudelaire. Amongst them, some have been destroyed (like Mérimée's copy, during a fire at his home), others are only mentioned in the correspondence of the person to whom they are dedicated, but were never known (particularly the copies given to Flaubert, Deschamps, Custine and Molènes), several of them only made a brief appearance in the nineteenth century before disappearing (amongst which we include the copies of Honoré Daumier, Louis Ulbach and Champfleury). Finally, some major international institutions, libraries and museums acquired them very early on for their collections (including those of Saint-Victor, Le Maréchal, Nadar, Pincebourde, etc.).
Since the Second World War, only thirty or so copies of Fleurs du Mal featuring an inscription by Baudelaire have appeared in libraries, on public sale or in bookshop catalogs, each time being subject to specific attention from all of the professionals, international institutions and bibliophiles that have been informed.
Perfectly set, with its wrappers, in a Jansenist binding by one of the major bookbinders of the end of the 19th century, Louis-Ludovic Tenré's very beautiful copy, one of twenty reserved for the author, enriched with precious handwritten corrections and given by Baudelaire on publication, appears as a remarkable witness to the specific conditions under which this legendary work was published.

Original ink on cartridge paper, signed in ink on the lower right with Henri Michaux's monogram “HM.” A tiny tear, causing no effect, at the top of the leaf.
The drawing has been authenticated by M. Franck Leibovici, Henri Michaux's beneficiary, and will be entered into the catalogue raisonné in preparation.

Very rare and highly sought-after first edition of Balzac's first novel signed by his name. Published a small number of copies, this first novel whose original title is inspired by the last of the Mohicans James Cooper, reappeared, reworked in 1834 under a new title: The Chouans .
This first important work of Balzac also marks the beginning of the comedy Humaine which she constitura since 1845 a scene of the military life .
Bindings in half red Russian leather, smooth backs adorned with gilt and black threads, gold friezes in heads and tails, marbled paper plates, Contemporary binding.
A restored bit and a flap sheet of the first volume changed, some small foxing.

Exceptional exemplary set in a charming Contemporary binding.

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 complete collected edition and first illustrated edition. The first edition of Dom Garcie de Navarre, L'Impromptu de Versailles, Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre, Les Amans magnifiques, and La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas. With thirty copper engraved illustrations by Jean Sauvé after Pierre Brassart, 9 of them included in the pagination.
19th-century red full morocco binding, spines with five raised bands, date gilt at foot, double gilt fillets to edges of covers and spine-ends, large inned gilt dentelle, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Bindings signed M. Lortic.

An exceptional copy of the famous 1682 edition housed in a very elegant binding by Marcelin Lortic, who succeeded his father Pierre-Marcellin Lortic - Baudelaire's binder.

Partly first edition, gathering the most famous speeches by Victor Hugo, including some of his most memorable addresses delivered at the tribune of the Legislative Assembly—most notably the speech on constitutional revision and the powerful plea he gave at the trial of his son, on 11 June 1851, before the Cour d'assises of the Seine, in defense of the inviolability of human life. Spurious mention of “eighth edition.”
Complete with the rare portrait of the author by Masson printed on China paper, as frontispiece.
Scattered occasional foxing.
Precious inscribed copy signed by Victor Hugo to Juliette Drouet : « à mon pauvre doux ange aimé. V. »
A treasured copy belonging to Victor Hugo’s muse and mistress. This moving and remorseful dedication is Hugo’s response to the tragedy Juliette endured that same year, having just discovered he had been unfaithful for seven years with Léonie Biard. In June 1851, Biard sent Juliette the letters Victor had written to her. In July, Hugo swore eternal fidelity to Juliette, and in August inscribed this plea for a more compassionate justice to her.
In the autumn, Juliette demanded that Hugo meet Madame Biard to formally end the affair—a meeting she choreographed in every detail, and to which Hugo complied.
Provenance: libraries of Pierre Duché (1972, no. 75) and Philippe Zoummeroff (2001, no. 71).