FOURNIER, Édouard. ~ Histoire de la Butte des Moulins suivie d’une étude historique sur les demeures de Corneille à Paris (hôtel de Guise – rue de Cléry – rue d’Argenteuil) … Avec deux vues de la Butte en 1551 et 1652. Paris Frédéric Henry et J. Lepin, 1877.
12mo (170 × 105 mm) in sixes, pp. [6], 294, including initial blank; with map frontispiece; uncut and unopened in the original printed wrappers; a little dusty towards the end, but sound.
First edition, inscribed on the initial blank ‘A son ami H. de la Pommeraye de Edouard Fournier’, presumably Henri de Lapommeraye (1839–1891), theatre critic and men of letters. ‘The Butte des Moulins (“windmill hill”) was a small hill—part natural, part built up—that had existed in Paris since ancient times. Dotted with windmills, the working-class neighborhood was dominated by small trades until the mid-1870s, when its population was cleared and the hill was leveled to construct the avenue de l’Opéra, which would become celebrated as the most glamorous street in Paris’ (The Met).