L'Ermitage - Revue artistique et littéraire. Année complète 1896

First edition.
Publisher's Bradel binding in half salmon cloth, smooth spine, black morocco title label, small gilt ornament and double gilt fillet at foot.
Eleven issues from January to November 1896. Original wrappers preserved.
Literary contributions by André Gide ("Ménalque"), Maurice Barrès, Octave Uzanne, Francis Jammes, Pierre Louÿs, Henri Ghéon, etc.
The February issue pays homage to Paul Verlaine, who had died a month earlier. A handsome portrait of the poet on his deathbed after a drawing by Noé Legrand.
Founded in 1890 by Henri Mazel, l'Ermitage is a monthly review belonging to the first wave of small Symbolist magazines. In the 1895s, the review entered decline, and its new director, Edouard Ducoté, called upon André Gide. The editorial team was then reduced to twelve regular contributors, friends of Gide. After multiple difficulties and attempts to reorganize the editorial team (Remy de Gourmont would make a passage there and also contribute financially in 1905), l'Ermitage drew its last breath in 1906.
L'Ermitage managed to distinguish itself from other important reviews of the time such as the Mercure de France or the Revue blanche because it claimed to be eclectic and apolitical; on its cover, one could read that it was "la seule Revue qui ne s'occupe ni de politique ni de sociologie [mais] qui traite uniquement de littérature et d'art" ["the only Review that concerns itself neither with politics nor sociology [but] that deals exclusively with literature and art"]. Its small illustrations are in Art Nouveau style, and, faithful to its Symbolist spirit, its contributors were more interested in poetry than in novels.
Tiphaine Samoyault, French literary critic, considers that l'Ermitage expresses a transition straddling fin de siècle aestheticism and the avant-garde poetry of the 1910s.