Tales, Myths and Legends

Complete series of illustrations the tale of Red Riding Hood hand-painted on 12 glass plates intended for a magic lantern, the ancestor of the projector and the cinema.
Publisher's cardboard box, with the titles on the top board: “12 Superior English Made lantern slides”. Handwritten: “Red Riding Hood”. Signs of rubbing on the box. A stop in the split lid at 2cm. On plate 9, paper is missing which circles the plate in a border. On plate 12, the black part has a small scratch, this part encircling the medallion which is projected by the lantern. Otherwise collection in excellent condition.
Millikin & Lawley carried out their trade in magic lanterns and plates between 1860...

First edition.

Half-shagreen binding of the late 19th century. Smooth spine decorated with repeated romantic tooling, title and date in gilt. Top edge gilt. Spine uniformly sunned. Light scattered foxing. 

Bookplate with crowned cipher, Alfred and Blanche de Curzon.  Alfred de Curzon was a French painter, deceased in 1895.

This collection contains important short stories by the author, including Mateo Falcone, L'enlèvement de la Redoute, Vision de Charles XI, Le vase étrusque...

Substantially revised reissue of the first illustrated edition of the Contes et nouvelles en vers, published ten years earlier, in 1685, by the same Henry Desbordes. Two parts bound in one 12mo volume: (16) 236 pp. (2); (8) 216 pp. (2).

The illustration comprises two frontispieces and 58 half-page vignettes after Romeyn de Hooghe. Yet this apparent continuity with the 1685 edition conceals a thorough reworking. The earlier copperplates were not simply reused: the compositions were re-engraved in reverse. The frontispiece to the first volume thus reproduces the 1685 design in mirror image, now...

First edition, one of 30 numbered copies on pur fil paper, this copy one of 10 hors commerce, the only grand papier (deluxe) copies.
A nice copy despite the very slightly sunned spine.
Autograph inscription dated and signed by Marguerite Yourcenar to Maurice Bourdel, director of publishing house Plon, and his wife : "... cette Electre perdue dans "un monde où l'ordre n'est pas"

Very rare first Viennese edition, illustrated with 366 figures by Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner. Remarkable baroque iconography. Only one copy located in electronic library catalogues at Strasbourg, one copy at Cambridge and another at Oxford.
Contemporary half brown sheep bindings, spines with raised bands decorated with fillets, green sheep title and volume labels. Skilful restorations to joints and headcaps. Rubbing to speckled paper boards. Although pagination is continuous across the four volumes and collation appears complete, we note the absence of a title page to the third part (binder's oversight?).
Engraved bookplate Froissart, second manuscript bookplate Augustin...

First edition, for which no copies on larger paper were produced.
A pleasing copy, with press clippings laid in.
Exceptional autograph presentation copy inscribed in English by Claude Lévi-Strauss to the anthropologist Raymond Firth.