A collection of forty-three artist's proofs on Chine of woodcuts by Henri Paillard. These illustrations were executed for the 1900 edition of Georges Rodenbach's Bruges-la-morte. Fifty copies printed on Chine and one hundred and fifty copies on wove paper.

Bottle-green half morocco with corners, marbled green paper sides, gilt fillets, spine with five raised bands decorated with gilt fillets, gilt compartments between the bands, author, title and date gilt-lettered on the spine, pastedowns of brown and green pebbled paper. Binding sunned, minute rubbing, corners slightly worn, a few scattered instances of foxing to the leaves.

A veritable ‘postcard novel’, it stands as one of the greatest achievements of Georges Rodenbach, a French-speaking Belgian writer who enjoyed considerable success in Parisian literary circles; the work also drew criticism for its markedly nostalgic vision of the Flemish city, described in French by a Walloon. The documentary illustration of the 1892 first edition, consisting of photographic views of the city, was replaced in the 1900 edition by Henri Paillard’s engraved corpus drawn from nature; his light, airy lines offer a more dreamlike and subjective, yet equally detailed, vision of Bruges’s ghostly streets. 

Luxuriously printed proofs from Henri Paillard’s engraved corpus, created for a major Symbolist novel, bound in a fine contemporary binding.