Marion de Lorme

First edition, rare copy with no statement of print.
Full blue morocco binding, spine with raised bands in the Jansenist style, endpapers and pastedowns of combed marbled paper, gilt dentelle framing the pastedowns, double gilt fillets and gilt tooling to headcaps and board edges, top edge gilt with untrimmed margins preserved, original front wrapper bound in, binding signed by Marius Michel. Monogrammed bookplate mounted on the verso of the first endpaper.
This copy is enriched with four hors-texte plates by Louis Boulanger and Alfred Johannot.
Signed autograph inscription by Victor Hugo on the half-title: « À Monsieur Ch[arles] Mévil son bien cordialement dévoué Victor Hugo. »

Valuable and intriguing presentation inscription to the administrator and principal shareholder of the highly influential Revue de Paris, publisher of Balzac, whom the young Hugo was likely hoping to win over. It was only in 1834, two years after the success of Notre-Dame de Paris, that Hugo would publish a text in the Revue, Claude Gueux, alongside his prolific rival’s Le Père Goriot.
Presentation copies of this title by Victor Hugo are exceedingly rare. In his Chronologie des livres imprimés de Victor Hugo, published in 2013, Éric Bertin records only nine such inscriptions in this edition: to Sainte-Beuve, Taylor, Paul Lacroix, Charles Mévil (this copy), Charles Nodier, Loève-Veimars, Armand Bertin, H. Romand, and the faithful Paul Meurice. The work also notes that this copy appeared in the Latour sale (1885) and, more significantly, the Noilly sale (1886).
Magnificent copy bound by Marius Michel, enriched with engravings and a signed autograph inscription by the author.