L'aigle à deux têtes

COCTEAU Jean. L'Aigle à deux têtes [The Eagle with Two Heads]
Gallimard, Paris 1946, 12 x 18,5 cm, contemporary half shagreen with custom slipcase
First edition, an advance [service de presse] copy.
Contemporary half purple shagreen over marbled paper boards, spine in five compartments very slightly faded, red shagreen title-piece with name of author, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, covers and spine preserved, top edge gilt.
This copy has its half purple morocco over marbled boards slipcase and a slipcase in marbled paper boards edged with purple morocco.
An exceptional autograph inscription signed by Jean Cocteau to Jean Voilier, the pseudonym of Jeanne Loviton, with a drawing in blue ink showing the face of a young man in profile with a two-headed eagle facing.
A muse endlessly celebrated and adored by her lovers Henriot, Giraudoux, Saint John Perse and many others, a lawyer and writer with libertine tastes, Jean Voilier – Jeanne Loviton by her true name – left the enduring stamp of her devilish charm on the literary Paris of the 20th century. She was also Paul Valéry's great love until the poet's death. Cocteau was a visitor to the latter's apartment at 5, rue Champigny from the 1930s on, and made this lovely ink inscription in January 1947 for this literary muse, of whom Mauriac even said that “she was the last larger-than-life figure of the age.”
An exceptional copy with an important autograph inscription signed and an original drawing by Jean Cocteau to Jean Voilier.