La Guzla, ou Choix de Poésies illyriques recueillies dans la Dalmatie, la Bosnie, la Croatie et l'Herzégovine

First edition presented in its rare publisher's binding.
Full cream cardboard binding, smooth spine, black frieze border on covers, bookplate pasted on one pastedown. Smooth spine decorated with 2 black fleurons and fillets. Spine slightly yellowed. Upper joint narrowly cracked at head.
Spine and covers lightly browned without consequence, some minor foxing as usual, slight black ink trace on one endpaper. Some light browning on otherwise white paper. Good copy.
The work is illustrated with an engraved portrait on China paper of Hyacinthe Maglanovitch, guzla player. Literary mystification of these Slavic ballads of which only one is authentic: the sad ballad of the noble wife. Nevertheless a very personal creation by Mérimée, the collection experiments with a new form of violence in literature through an exotic language.