Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui - Collection quasi complète du n°1 au n°416

Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui - An almost complete collection from n°1 to n°416
Léon Vanier, Paris n.d. (1878-1898), 19.5 x 28.5 cm, 8 bound volumes
The first edition of this rare collection, almost complete and comprising 416 issues of four pages, each illustrated with a color caricature and sometimes illustrations to text. A ninth volume appeared in 1899.
Contemporary half red shagreen over marbled paper boards, spine in six compartments, titles and volume numbers in gold, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, title page preserved in each volume.
Spines uniformly faded, a little spotting and occasional browning. No. 136 slightly shaved by binder and first page of No. 74 restored with adhesive. One internal tear not touching text to volume 2.
Manuscript ex-libris and embossed stamp to half-titles.
With the color title pages preserved and bound in.
An impressive gallery of the figures of the age caricatured and described by the foremost avant-garde artists and writers of the era.
Established by the writer Félicien Champsaur and the illustrator André Gill in 1878, this exceptional literary and satirical review was taken over by Léon Vanier - the publisher of the Parnassiens - from 1885 before closing down in 1899. Each issue was dedicated to a figure of the time in the world of arts and letters, or more rarely, of politics, science, or technology.
The full set thus comprises 469 monographs from some of the most alternative voices of the era: Jules Laforgue, Gustave Kahn, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Jean Moréas, Félix Fénéon and even Paul Verlaine, the only one Vanier paid, in order to help him out. Each issue included on the front page a large and fine lithographed caricature in color by artists such as Manuel Luque, André Gill and Félix Régamey, but also painters who went on to attain legendary status: Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen, Pissarro, Seurat, Signac, and others.
The issues devoted to literature cover all the literary schools of the second half of the 19th century, including the Buveurs d'eau, the Vilains bonshommes, the Hydropathes, the Parnassiens, the Naturalists, the Decadents, the Symbolists and the Incohérents. An important place is also accorded to painters with broader horizons: the Pont Aven school (Schuffenecker, Pissarro, Emile Bernard, Maximilien Luce), the Affichistes (Chéret, Willette, Caran d'Ache, Georges Auriol, Job, Steinlen), the Post-Impressionnists (Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Anquetin), the Pointillists (Signac, Seurat), and Symbolists (Redon). Musicians are also not lacking, with drawings of Gounot, Massenet, Verdi, Camille Saint Saëns, Rubinstein and Reyer.
An exceptional gallery of portraits bearing witness to the free spirit and cheekiness of the French intellectual underground.