First edition.
Half aubergine shagreen bindings with corners, spines uniformly sunned with five raised bands decorated with gilt fillets, speckled top edges.
Important compilation of numerous issues around literature. The two volumes concern above all the "Romanesque Sites", that is to say writers' residences as well as the places that inspired them for their plots and poems. The panel of authors treated is quite vast: Ronsard, Rabelais, Montaigne, Pascal, La Fontaine, Racine, Voltaire, Rousseau, Baudelaire, Zola, the Goncourts, Loti, Proust...
A very interesting article at the beginning of the second volume entitled "Brief Impressions of an Old Bibliophile" by Louis Barthou, illustrated with numerous reproductions of bindings, as well as authors' inscriptions.
Very numerous artistic collaborations by Schmied, Montagné, René Lelong, Camille Barthélemy, Henry Scheffer, Hansi, Paul Jouve, and Clarence Gagnon notably. Our copy presents very numerous plates on strong paper, as well as many photographs of the different places treated.
L'Illustration is a French weekly magazine published from 1843 to 1944 which had no fewer than 5293 issues. This publication - which claimed to be generalist - remained quite famous for the mine of information it represents as well as for its abundant iconography. To celebrate the publication of the first issue, on March 4, 1843, its editorialists, Charton, Joanne, Paulin and Dubochet, would indeed write: "How many written descriptions, even the best ones, are pale, lifeless, always incomplete and difficult to understand in comparison with the actual representation of things".
