Hien le maboul

The first edition, of which there were no deluxe copies.
Bradel binding in half sage-green cloth, spine decorated with gilt floral motif, double gilt fillet at foot, red shagreen title label, marbled paper boards, original wrappers preserved, contemporary binding.
Presentation copy inscribed by Emile Nolly to Jean Ajalbert.
Also contains a four-page signed and dated autograph letter from the author, mounted on a stub, and addressed to the dedicatee in which Emile Nolly warmly thanks Jean Ajalbert for supporting his candidacy for the Prix Goncourt as well as for his laudatory articles in the Indochinese press concerning "Hien le maboul". Finally, we include an original photograph of the author. The article by Jean Ajalbert published in an Indochinese weekly is bound at the rear.

Provenance: Jean Ajalbert’s Japanesque bookplate, in the style of the Nabis, woodcut printed in a very small number of copies and signed with a monogram, probably that of Félicien Rops. “"His bookplate bears all the character of his literature: it is an idealised synthesis of his native Auvergne and of Mount Fuji Japanese horizons,” commented the Archives de la Société des collectionneurs d'exlibris et de reliures artistiques in 1932.

Rops, a major printmaker who was strongly influenced by Japonisme, signed his work with numerous different sets of initials. He used this same “M. B.” monogram for at least one other engraving: the frontispiece to L’Art priapique, published by Poulet-Malassis in 1864. His catalogues raisonnés record very few examples of his bookplates; only one, for Dr Escoube, was included by Exteens in L’Œuvre de Rops, no. 1097.