Les Fleurs du Mal. by LYDIS, Mariette, illustrator. Charles BAUDELAIRE.

2 vols, folio (334 × 250 mm), text: [8], 13-337, plus portrait frontispiece and a facsimile leaf of Baudelaire’s manuscript (both mounted), plus loose inserted leaf ‘Prière d’insérer pour les Fleurs du Mal’. Uncut and mostly unopened; plate vol: title, 10 etched and coloured plates signed in pencil, each with preceding title leaf, limitation leaf. Uniform drab wrappers lettered in red. Creasing to wrappers together with some dust-staining.

First edition, one 353 copies of the text and just 125 of the plates (both volumes numbered 11) with all plates signed by Mariette Lydis and in their coloured state, generally considered Mariette Lydis’ finest book. The text volume contains a facsimile of Baudelaire’s self portrait and a page of facsimile of his manuscript, both from the collection of Armand Godoy, as well as the loose leaf ‘Prière d’inserer...’ by Jean Royère’, the latter not always preserved. The artist created a further sequence of coloured drawings for Les Fleurs du Mal in the 1930s issued as lithographs in 1935. These reproductions were frequently bound up with remaining copies of the 1928 text volume, causing confusion among cataloguers, with these hybrid 1928/33 volumes habitually dated 1928 without further comment. The 1935 illustrations have none of the sparse intensity of Lydis’ 1928 sequence of etched plates. Carteret IV, 63: ‘Ensemble recherchée et cotée. Une des meilleures illustrations de l’artiste’.