La vie de mon père

Stated third edition. It should be noted that there is no second edition as such: the first edition was issued in two printings, and this so-called third edition is in fact the second, and moreover identical in every respect to the first. In addition to the two title medallions, the edition should comprise 14 plates; our copy contains only 11, lacking the frontispiece to the first part and two further plates (the 7th, entitled “La Naïveté”, and the 13th, “L'Audience”).

20th-century binding in imitation of an 18th-century binding, full tan sheep. Spine with raised bands, decorated with acorn tools and rolls. Green morocco title label, red morocco volume label. Some rubbing. A handsome and quite deceptive pastiche. Last leaf of the first volume restored and backed. Scattered foxing, a few leaves browned.

The author's favourite among his own works, this biographical novel portrays the peasantry and the figure of an honest father, plain and upright; a profound nostalgia pervades the book, which the author seems to set against the decadence of Parisian mores. The genealogy of the Restifs, on p. 197 of the second volume, traces the author's ancestry back to the emperor Pertinax, successor of Commodus.