[MADAGASCAR] La Revue de Madagascar - Tête de collection du N°1 au N°12

First edition and rare gathering of the first twelve issues of La Revue de Madagascar, from no. 1 of January 1933 to no. 12 of October 1935, extensively illustrated with reproduced photographs.

The three volumes were bound in 1935 in full incised and tinted mahogany calf, in bindings signed Ramanakanja. Spines with four raised bands, slightly faded, decorated with incised motifs, dates and volume numbers blind-stamped, the final volume left unlettered; large incised and tinted compositions to the boards, different on each of the three volumes and inspired by Malagasy landscapes, with incised titles. Original wrappers preserved. Some rubbing to the spines; the decoration on the third volume partly faded.

A printed slip preserved in the first issue states: “La Revue de Madagascar remplace le Bulletin économique trimestriel (partie documentation).” Founded in January 1933 under the auspices of the Service général de l’information, the journal did indeed continue the documentary section of the Bulletin économique and became one of the publishing instruments of the Gouvernement Général, combining economic, administrative, and ethnographic material with an unusually rich photographic record.

The January issues give particular prominence to the official voice. The first reproduces an address by Governor-General Léon Cayla; those of 1934 and 1935 open with his surveys Madagascar en 1933 and Madagascar en 1934. Yet literature quickly found a place within this administrative publication. Pierre Camo and Robert Boudry appear in the early issues; Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, a major figure of modern Malagasy literature, contributed a poem to no. 5 in January 1934 and returned in 1935 with Aux arbres and À Pierre Camo. Marius-Ary Leblond likewise contributed to nos. 9 and 11.

The juxtaposition is significant: within an official publication of the colonial administration, administrative texts, photography, regional studies, and literature meet at the very moment when a modern Malagasy intellectual life was asserting itself.

The bindings add another dimension to the set. Signed Ramanakanja and dated 1935, they do more than protect the twelve issues; they give them a locally made form almost contemporary with their publication, translating onto leather an image of Madagascar that answers the one disseminated by the journal through text and photography.

Gathered in these bindings made in Madagascar in 1935, the first twelve issues acquire a unity they did not possess on publication; Ramanakanja’s leatherwork naturally carries forward the story of a journal which, issue after issue, was itself seeking to become a remembrance of its island.