Martine fait du théâtre

New edition, front and rear pastedowns and free endpapers signed by Gérard Grée.

Publisher's binding with pictorial boards, smooth spine, light rubbing to spine-ends, illustrated endpapers and boards.

Superb original blue pencil portrait of Martine by Marcel Marlier, drawn within the tondo on the first free endpaper, surrounded by his presentation inscription: "For Andrée Alcaraz with all my sympathy. August 86 M. Marlier"

"This eternally well-behaved little girl, forever aged around ten, invented for Éditions Casterman in 1954 by the author Gilbert Delahaye and the illustrator Marcel Marlier, whose pencil stroke has been so often imitated but so rarely equalled, has established itself as a veritable publishing phenomenon without ever accomplishing any heroic feat, other than that of enduring and even evolving through the decades without drawing attention to itself – unless, however, one looks at the notion of the epic on another scale, or, better still, dares to consider once more, as a child would, the realms of the trivial, the banal and the everyday for what they are: playgrounds where endless and authentic adventures ceaselessly arise." (Laurence Boudart)