Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux

First edition, admirably illustrated with 201 hors-texte figures and 120 vignettes by Grandville. Hetzel's publisher's preface, most often absent, is here present before the prologue. Most copies begin directly with the prologue. 2 frontispieces.
Contemporary half-navy shagreen bindings with corners. Spine with false flat raised bands with 4 compartments composed of thick and thin fillets, one with fleuron, mirror tooling on the raised bands, gilt title. In a way not perceptible at first glance, there exist small differences between the 2 volumes which were bound by the same binder but not at the same time: thus the typography of the title is noticeably different, the compartment with the fleuron has no thick fillet framing. The volumes bear no volume numbering. We know that the 2 volumes did not appear at the same time and that the first volume appeared separately and that a second part, a continuation, was added afterwards. The binding seems to have followed the publication process. Traces of rubbing. Some pale foxing on well-white paper, however foxing on the half-titles and the last page of the table of contents.
Handsome copy.
This famous publication needs no introduction, a satire of contemporary Parisian society of the Second Empire, whose enterprise is due to Hetzel, who under the pseudonym of Stahl signed several texts and commissioned texts from the most famous pens of the time: Balzac, Musset, Sand, La Bedollière... The last chapter recounts the imprisonment of the different writers whom one can see in locations at the Jardin des plantes, where we see Grandville from behind drawing them. One of Grandville's great works of imagination, full of verve and fantasy.