La honte

First edition, one of 12 numbered copies on hollande paper, the only large paper copies.

Full red shagreen binding, spine with three raised bands decorated with gilt fillets and gilt cartouche enriched with black typographic motifs, marbled paper endpapers and pastedowns, bookplate affixed to pastedown, original wrappers and spine preserved, top edge gilt, other edges uncut.

Foxing to some uncut edges.

Autograph inscription signed by Georges Clemenceau to Monsieur Henry Leyret, political and judicial chronicler and editor at L'Aurore.

The Tiger here presents his monumental work on the Dreyfus Affair to one of his collaborators at L'Aurore, where "J'accuse!" was published. Both Leyret and Clemenceau shared a profound sensitivity to social injustice. Leyret himself led a successful campaign in the pages of the same newspaper against the unjust sentences to hard labour imposed on anarchists. He was directly involved in L'Aurore's pro-Dreyfus commitment by writing a major article on the founding principles of the newly created League for the Rights of Man, three months after "J'accuse!". In 1898, he compiled Esterhazy's correspondence for posterity: "Let them now read the Letters of a Guilty Man, let them read them to their wives, to their sons... Ah! I defy them not to be indignant, not to catch in the eyes of their listeners a flash of anger, an expression of disgust, and not to cry out: 'No! This acquitted man is not innocent!'"

An exceptional inscription to a committed chronicler who waged the fierce struggle for law and justice alongside Clemenceau in the columns of L'Aurore.