Le Panama ou les Aventures de mes Sept Oncles

First edition, one of 500 numbered copies on Arches laid paper.
Work illustrated with 25 American railroad route maps.
Spine skillfully restored, discreet crease marks to corners.
Superb livre-objet, like the Prose du Transsibérien which was composed in the same period, the poem is presented folded. The second cover in bright red executed by Raoul Dufy resembles the railway timetables that one slipped into one's pocket: "Le nom de Cendrars orne une bouée de sauvetage, associant l'auctorité d'avant-garde au travail de sauvetage, dans une décennie marquée par les catastrophes maritimes, du Titanic au Lusitania" (The name of Cendrars adorns a life preserver, associating avant-garde authority with rescue work, in a decade marked by maritime disasters, from the Titanic to the Lusitania) (Sophie Esch).
Rare early autograph inscription, signed and dated December 1918 on this text by Blaise Cendrars to Georges Le Cardonnel, literary critic who co-wrote with Charles Vellay, La Littérature contemporaine, a survey conducted among French critics, writers and poets. The year following the inscription, he would sign a review of J'ai tué in la Minerve française.