PAUL-MARGUERITTE, Lucie, translator. ~ Ts’ing Ngai, ou les plaisirs contrariés. Conte Chinois ancien, adapté des Kin-kou-kikouan illustré de 16 peintures sur soie. [Paris: A. Lahure]: ‘aux dépens de l’auteur’, 1927.
Folio (320 × 282 mm), pp. 76, [4], plus 16 silk paintings, mounted, tissue guards with printed captions. Loose in original wrappers, purple silk brocade chemise. Wrappers very slightly faded at edges with minimal creasing. An excellent copy.
First edition of this luxurious production, the text translated by Lucie Paul-Marguerite from the Chinese seventeenth-century collection Kin-kou-kikouan (or Jingu qiguan) and telling the moral story of an extra-marital adventure. The 16 original paintings on silk are attributed to Ouang Shao Ki of Szechuan, copied for this edition in Peking by four separate artists (one each for the drawing, the foliage, the clothing and the figures). They are remarkable productions, and each one is captioned in manuscript with Chinese characters. Produced in only 125 copies, this is one of the 10 copies on Japon reserved for the author (copy number 3).
Lucie Paul-Margueritte (1886-1955) began publishing in magazines at the age of eighteen. After three years of marriage, she divorced and thereafter lived with her widowed sister, Ève Paul-Margueritte. Together, they raised the latter's son, living from their writings. She made numerous translations including several from the Chinese and a number of English novels, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Carteret IV. p. 265: ‘Belle publication’. WorldCat: Bn and Boston Athenaeum only.