L'homme qui rit

First edition, without statement of edition. All half-titles present.
Contemporary bindings in red opera half morocco, Jansenist spine with raised bands, author, title, volume number and date in gilt, top edge gilt. Quality binding. Some scattered foxing. Uncut set.
Fine copy, without statement of edition, in good contemporary binding.
Armorial bookplate of the library of Emile Mancel engraved by Trouchou le Gavre; a second with his monogram. Naval Commissioner at Dunkirk 1886 then General Commissioner at Le Havre 1888, he wrote numerous articles on naval history, particularly on Jean Bart. His library was sold in 1896.
Certainly Hugo's masterpiece in the novelistic domain, baroque and dark, where the poetic style evolving through antitheses and oxymorons is pushed to its extreme limits, and in which the Surrealists would recognize themselves.