Les chansons de Bilitis

Edition with some parts in first edition, containing 52 previously unpublished pieces out of 158. A portrait of Bilitis by Albert Laurens as frontispiece, after the polychrome bust in the Louvre Museum. One of 550 copies on vellum, no. 445.
Half brown shagreen binding with corners signed Champs-Stroobant at the top of the endpaper. Smooth spine with mosaic work, decorated with mirrored mosaic tooling in red and black, with Greek key roll borders. Fillet lines on boards. Top edge gilt. Spine uniformly faded. Traces of rubbing.
Very fresh copy, with original wrappers preserved, uncut paper, full margins.
Handsome copy.
Literary hoax in which Bilitis is presented in the translator Pierre Louys's preface as a young Greek woman from the 6th century who would have lived on the island of Lesbos where she would have been Sappho's rival. Pierre Louys pushed the hoax so far as to create false bibliographic references, and a large part of the critics were deceived by it. Debussy set 3 of these pieces to music as early as 1897. The poems and songs trace the life of a young virgin, her first erotic stirrings and her sapphic loves.