Le tiroir du diable

First edition, richly illustrated with 75 hors-texte plates, principally by Gavarni, including 4 music plates framed with wood engravings by Bertall and several compositions by Bertall. Very numerous vignettes by Monnier, Français, Daubigny... The compositions with multitudes of vignettes by Bertall on subjects such as evenings at the opera, Paris by night... which constitute the ensemble of Paris comique are particularly delightful. This edition is rarer than le Diable à Paris.
Contemporary green half-shagreen. Smooth spine decorated with series of romantic tools in compartments. Green corsillonné paper boards. Borders rubbed and corners slightly bumped. Some scattered foxing, principally in the outer margins, on good white paper. The text jumps from p. 5 to 41 without loss, the text continuing. Good copy.
Portrait of Paris, in all its aspects, at the beginning of the Second Empire, Le tiroir du Diable sails on the success of le Diable à Paris with the same collective for texts and illustrations. One notes the presence of Balzac's text: Physiologie des boulevards, two texts by Sand and one by Musset. The other collaborators being celebrated litterateurs of this period, Edouard Ourliac, Frédéric Soulié... At the beginning of the work, Lavallée's text on the geography of Paris (which was also present at the beginning of le Diable à Paris). At the end of the work, statistics of Paris, the work always wanting to be both entertaining and informative. In this regard, all the texts, satirical or not, of the work are more or less of journalistic character, but as journalism was then practiced under the Second Empire. The work concludes with the statistics of Paris.