[ENFANTINA] Collection complète du journal "Le Dimanche des enfants". Journal des récréations. Première et deuxième séries

Paris, Louis Janet and later Madame Veuve Louis Janet, from circa 1840 and subsequent years. 17 octavo volumes, 14.8 x 23.7 cm.

A set comprising the ten volumes of the first series and the seven volumes of the second, corresponding to the complete collection as described by Gumuchian. Uniformly bound in contemporary full burgundy calf, the smooth spines faded and decorated with gilt Romantic arabesques, gilt ornamental bands at head and foot, boards framed with double gilt fillets and gilt cornerpieces, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, gilt lines to the board edges. Some corners slightly bumped. Scattered foxing and occasional light staining; small losses at the foot of several leaves in volume VI of the first series, not affecting the text.

The collection is illustrated with 214 lithographic plates in black or two tones, drawn principally by Louis Lassalle with the assistance of the Cattier workshop: 130 plates in the first series, thirteen per volume, and 84 in the second, twelve per volume.

None of the title pages is dated, but the publication history remains visible through the imprints: the first five volumes of the first series appear under the name of Louis Janet, the subsequent volumes under that of his widow, who continued the publication after his death. Begun around 1840, the periodical thus records materially the transition from one generation of the Janet publishing house to the next.

The periodical brought together many writers familiar to the children's publishing market under the July Monarchy, including J.-N. Bouilly, Charles and Fanny Richomme, Eugénie Foà, Léon Chrétien, Louis Guérin, Anna des Essarts, Gustave des Essards, Ernest Fouinet, Alfred Désessarts, Charles-Malo, Baptistin Poujoulat, Jacques Arago, Eugène Nyon, Léonide de Mirbel, Louise Leneveux, and Élise Voïart. Moral and family narratives are accompanied by history, curiosities, travel writing, and descriptions of distant societies.

The second volume of the first series provides a good example, containing Baptistin Poujoulat's “Mœurs des Turcomans” and Victor Séguin's “Deux esclaves d'Alger”. Through contributions of this kind, the periodical introduced contemporary travel literature into children's reading, a vein also represented by Jacques Arago, traveller and writer, and brother of François Arago.

Le Dimanche des enfants belongs fully to the expansion of children's periodical publishing in France during the 1830s and 1840s, alongside such titles as Le Journal des enfants, Le Journal des jeunes personnes, Le Journal des demoiselles, and Le Magasin des demoiselles. The Janet house, already prominent in almanacs, keepsakes, and illustrated books, developed here a format combining instruction, narrative, entertainment, and illustration, well suited to the new patterns of family reading.

The bibliography of the collection is not entirely without ambiguity: while Gumuchian describes the ten volumes of the first series and seven of the second as complete, an older catalogue of the Bibliothèque nationale records a second series continuing as far as volume IX. The present set therefore corresponds to the complete form of the collection as traditionally described in the specialist bibliography.

Through the scale of its illustration and the graphic continuity maintained by Lassalle across seventeen uniformly bound volumes, the present set offers an unusually coherent expression of the ambitions of Romantic publishing for children: to instruct, entertain, and open the world to young readers through image as much as text.