Religions et religion

First edition.

Half green chagrin binding, flat spine with color restoration ruled in black and gilt, gilt frieze and date at foot, marbled paper boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers preserved with restorations, binding of the period.

Presentation copy inscribed to Léon Richer.

Born into modest circumstances and having lost his father at an early age, Léon Richer founded in 1869 the weekly Droit des femmes, aimed at reforming women's legal rights, which enjoyed the renewed support of Victor Hugo: "I wholheartedly join in your useful endeavour. For forty years I have been pleading for the great social cause you devote yourself so nobly" he wrote on 8 June 1872, in a letter read publicly.
Richer, himself a freethinker and freemason, engaged in an anticlerical struggle and in the cause of a secular Republic, must have found an echo of his own ideas in Hugo display of criticism at religious dogmas and institutions.