The Nectar and the Ambrosia: Legendary Gift Ideas

First edition, one of 10 numbered copies on Japan paper, the deluxe issue.
Bradel binding in half chocolate-brown morocco with bands, smooth spine, date gilt at foot, marbled paper boards, brown endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers and spine preserved, gilt edges, binding signed Honnelaître.

First French edition, rare. Translated by Etienne François de Sennevert. A fine printing on handsome laid paper.
Contemporary full polished mottled calf, smooth spines richly decorated with gilt tooling in compartments and rolls, black morocco lettering-pieces, tan morocco volume labels, triple gilt fillet borders on the boards. Some surface abrasions to the boards, joints, and borders. Slight brown waterstain in the upper margin of the preliminary leaves of volume 1. A small loss at the foot of volume 4. Headcap of volume 2 lightly worn. Loss at the lower joint of volume 1. Despite a few minor defects, a very handsome copy.

First edition. Royal families of Europe. Set of the French administration.

Copy with the cipher of Marie Amélie d'Orléans, wife of Louis-Philippe, who also used a simple monogram for bindings from the time he became king. Some of the almanacs were directly bound by the publisher for the royal family, these copies often bear simple marks, the publisher not having the stamps belonging to the sovereigns. Nothing formally attests however that this is a copy for Marie Amélie d'Orléans, it is on the other hand certain that this copy was intended for a member of the royal family whose M is the first name. Furthermore Marie Amélie is only the name known today of the queen, who...

One of the very few copies bearing an autograph inscription—fewer than ten are recorded—of this first edition, containing the Marseillaise.
First edition illustrated with an engraved frontispiece by Charles-Étienne Gaucher after Jean-Jacques Le Barbier and four pages of engraved musical score at the end of the volume. La Marseillaise appears here in its true first edition, having first been pre-published in the Almanach des Muses in 1793 and circulated as separate leaves.
Contemporary half-sheepskin binding, smooth spine gilt-decorated with compartments, fleurons and fillets, red morocco title-piece, black pasteboard...

First edition, one of 15 numbered copies on Hollande Van Gelder paper and signed with the publisher's initials.
Full green morocco, the spine in five compartments, the first cover inlayed with a large and superb plate by Marguerite Lecreux of a horn sculpted in Cameo, featuring a sailboat with its sails unfurled, on the calm sea appears an engraved silverfish set under the plate of the horn and visible in transparency, pastedown in silk decorated with a submarine pattern (coral, jellyfish, starfishes and algae) framed in morocco embellished with quintuple gilt fillets, endpages of iridescence cloth, the following pages in marbled paper, the headband highlighted with a...

First edition abundantly illustrated with wood engravings in text and plates.

Publisher's gilt red percale beveled binding signed Engel at tail. Smooth spine richly decorated with various ornaments inlaid in black. Large special plate with the arms of the city of Paris framed by 2 nude victories, 2 medals. Wide frieze of Greek keys and decorative border. Second board with succession of black frames. Brown endpapers. Gilt edges. Rubbing to headcaps, corners. Scattered foxing.
Handsome copy, quite solid and uniform, with sharp gilding.
Beyond the classic presentation of the exhibition, with its pavilions and the "wonders" of the Trocadero, this publication...

Handwritten signed postcard from Alexander Calder to Juan Luis Buñuel, written in English in ballpoint pen and blue felt-tip. Saché postmark (Indre-et-Loire). Paris address of Juan Luis Buñuel.
Card perforated with two holes at the top. Photograph of one of Calder's stabiles on the front.
Provenance: Buñuel family archives.
In 1939, Luis Buñuel, who had just received an offer to work in Hollywood, decided, with his wife and child, to leave the chaotic situation in Europe to go and live the American Dream. The penniless Buñuels initially spent a few precarious months living in New York. Luis Buñuel found himself forced to ask Dali—his longstanding friend in exile...

Rare and highly sought-after first edition (...) of which only a portion of the copies contains a preface (cf. Clouzot). The important account of the lawsuit concerning The Lily of the Valley that precedes the novel was not retained in subsequent editions and is often lacking in a number of the copies published by Werdet.

Copy complete with both the preface and the account of the lawsuit that opposed Balzac to the publisher François Buloz. Contemporary half green sheepskin bindings, smooth spines decorated with gilt romantic typographical motifs, gilt fillets at heads and tails, marbled paper boards, paste paper endpapers and pastedowns, marbled edges...

First edition, one of 95 copies on pur fil, the only deluxe issue after 45 copies on Hollande.
A slight vertical crease on the front cover.
A handsome copy.

First edition, with the illustrations of the author (often missing) and 79 plates (plate 27-28 double page) hors texte steel-engraved by Forestier after drawings by Antoine Chazal.
Strictly contemporary Romantic binding in brown calf, spine in six compartments richly decorated with gilt fillets and blindtooled arabesques, boards with blindtooled arabesques to corners, double fillet frame and gilt initials ‘A.D.' to centre, gilt roulette framing marbled endpapers and pastedowns, double gilt fillets to edges of covers. Binding very skilfully restored.
Jacques-Pierre Maygrier (1771-1835) was a student of Antoine Dubois, the obstetrician of Empress Marie-Louise. He practiced at the...

First edition, one of 90 copies on Holland paper, ours being one of a few lettered hors commerce copies.
Bradel binding in half brown box, smooth spine, decorated paper boards, brown endpapers and pastedowns, original covers preserved, top edge gilt, binding signed by Goy & Vilaine.
Precious autograph inscription signed by Paul Valéry: « A Victoria Ocampo, - a sus piès de Vd - ce petit rien qu'elle a bien voulu désirer. »
A superb dedication that marks the beginning of the enduring friendship between the two writers, beyond all differences.
At Valéry's death in 1945, Victoria Ocampo would recall their first meeting in December 1928 during a writers’ dinner to...

First edition published as part of the complete works
Half light brown morocco by Petit successeur de Simier, spine in six compartments, marbled pastedowns and endpapers, top edge gilt
Handsome autograph inscription from George Sand to his friend Charles Sagnier, a frequent visitor of the house at Nohant during the final years of Sand's life.
Provenance: from the library of Charles Sagnier with his ex libris.

A handsome illustrated edition and one of the first printed by Gabriele Giolito de Ferrari, dedicated to the Dauphin of France. It has a superb engraved title with Giolito's printer's device (a phoenix being reborn from its ashes on a globe marked with the printer's initials), 56 attractive woodcuts and numerous large ornate capitals, as well as a portrait of Ariosto after Titian in a medallion at the end of the poem, and two states of the printer's device.
The end of the work is made up of a vocabulary of obscure words and an explanation of the difficult passages in the work compiled by Lodovico Dolce, with a separate title and not included in the pagination. Giolito published more...

HUGO Victor
La Pitié suprême [The Supreme Compassion] Calmann Lévy, Paris 1879, 150 x 240 mm (5 15/16 x 9 7/16 ”), half shagreen
First edition.
Elegant half dark blue shagreen over marbled paper boards by René Aussourd, spine in four compartments with gilt dots and double gilt compartments containing horizontal arabesques and gilt stars, date and “ex. de J. Drouet” in gilt at foot, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, covers and spine preserved (marginal repairs to covers), top edge gilt, ex-libris of Pierre Duché on one endpaper.
An exceptional presentation copy, inscribed by Victor Hugo to Juliette Drouet, the love of his life: “The first copy...

First edition in French, printed on vergé paper.

Publisher's Arabesque yellow paper binding by A. Lenègre, spine with gilt, black, and turquoise Arabic decorative motifs (head- and tail-pieces slightly rubbed), upper cover richly ornamented with Arabic decorative motifs in gilt, black and turquoise with a frame of gilt and black fillets, turquoise paper pastedowns and endpapers (corners slightly bumped), all edges gilt, a few small insignificant spots to lower cover.
Text by Alfred Edmund Brehm & Johannes Dumichen.
The work is illustrated with 24 watercolors after nature by Charles Werner.
A few small spots, mostly affecting endpapers.
Rare.

New edition from La collection des classiques français, illustrated with a portrait and a folding map of Spain. Fine edition with classical typography and wide margins.

Full glazed wine-red calf bindings, sky blue title and volume labels, smooth spines richly decorated with cathedral tools and rolls, boards stamped in blind with a large central monastic medallion, a blind border frieze and a second in gilt, boards with slight worm damage, marbled edges.

Magnificent romantic binding by a great binder of the period.

It should be noted that the preface by the Comte de Neufchâteau, academician, is actually by Victor Hugo (then aged 16); the...