Les moments perdus de John Shag

Later edition (the first was published three years earlier in 1906).

Bradel binding with marbled paper boards, smooth spine with some parts lacking paper, brown morocco lettering piece with some loss to margis, one joint split, handmade paper endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers and spine preserved, contemporary binding.

Exceptional copy mounted on a stub, signed and inscribed by Auguste Gilbert de Voisins to his celebrated writer friend and traveling companion on Chinese roads and rivers: "to Victor Segalen in thanks for speaking to me of the Orient. AGilbert de Voisins." 

It was on the quay of the Vieille Darse in the port of Toulon, through the intermediary of Claude Farrère, that the travel writer Augusto Gilbert de Voisins began his long friendship with Victor Segalen. The same year as the publication of these sketches drawn from Voisins's travels in North Africa, Senegal, and Dahomey, the two writers embarked on a ten-month expedition through central China. Voisins joined Segalen in Beijing before setting out on August 9, 1909. They crossed the provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi to Sichuan and descended the Yangtze to Shanghai. This journey inspired Segalen's Stèles, one of which, "Au démon secret," was directly influenced by his friend de Voisins's eponymous novel ("Stèle du Maître du Coeur. Emprunté corps et âme au Démon secret d'Augusto," Segalen would write as an epigraph). Voisins published the account of their adventure under the title Écrit en Chine (1913). They departed once more on an official archaeological mission to western China, interrupted by the declaration of war in August 1914. 

Rare token of friendship to Victor Segalen from his most faithful traveling companion, in gratitude for having "spoken to him of the Orient" and encouraged him to undertake this legendary journey across China: "Come!" he wrote, "come quickly [...] Let us gallop together across the oldest China; it would please me to see delightful landscapes in your company" (Écrit en Chine, p. 8).