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An attractive, probably from a Book of Hours or Breviary (the verso has the end of Psalm 96 and the antiphon ‘Dignare me laudare te, Virgo sacrata. Da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos’. The portion of Psalm 98 present reads:

Cantate Domino canticum novum, quia mirabilia fecit.
Salvavit sibi dextera ejus, et brachium sanctum ejus.
Notum fecit Dominus salutare suum; in conspectu gentium revelavit justitiam suam.
Recordatus est misericordiæ suæ, et veritatis suæ domui Israël.

(’O sing unto the Lord a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory.
The Lord hath made known his salvation: his righteousness hath he openly shewed in the sight of the heathen.
He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel... KJV)

Two attractive devotional cards on the theme of love. Both invoke the imagery of the hunt. One reads: ‘L’amour en forme de veneris / chasse les renards de mon coeur’ [Love in the form of hunters chases the foxes from my heart]; the other: ‘Il advient bien ou plus fin / de chasser pour son voisin’ [it would be better or finer to hunt for one’s neighbour]. Each has its central scene within a polygonal cartouche and is surrounded by elaborate floral borders. De Boudt and Bouché were both active as printmakers in late seventeenth-century Antwerp, the former being the pupil of the latter. De Boudt, in particular, produced many thousands of such small engravings and they continued to be printed well into the following century.

First edition, inscribed by the author’s father to Edmund Gosse of this posthumous novel by Toru Dutt (1856-1877), Indian poet, translator, and novelist. Dutt was born in Calcutta and received her early education there, both in Indian and European languages, under the encouragement of her mother and father (the latter a colonial administrator). ‘In 1869, when she was aged thirteen, and at a time when conservative Hindus believed that crossing the ‘black waters’ was blasphemous, the Dutt family travelled by sea to Europe. Toru and her elder sister Aru were the first Bengali girls to dare such a transgression’ (Chandani Lokugé in ODNB). Toru studied French in Nice and Paris, and English in London and Cambridge. On returning to India she continued her reading of French and British Romantics such as Hugo, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley as well as the Brontës and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She also began an intensive course of study in Sanskrit, while at the same time adapting her new knowledge to retell legends from the Mahabharata in English, using traditional English poetic forms. She died of consumption in 1877 at the age of just twenty-one, by which time she had written four books, of which only one, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876), was published in her lifetime.

The novel Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers, was set in Brittany, France, and was published only posthumously. ‘The manuscript, hand-copied by Govin Chunder, was sent to Clarisse Bader, who contributed a foreword, and with whose assistance it was published by Didier in Paris in 1879 and included in the Librarie Académique’. It was an ‘exciting hybrid between the nineteenth-century European gothic romance and the realist genres, and can be read as the creative experiment by a talented novice writer inspired by her reading of European literature’ (Lokugé).

For Western readers, as both a young woman and as an Indian writing in English, a great deal of the interest in Toru Dutt’s poetry was due to her familiarity with English and French literature. Edmund Gosse was an enthusiastic patron and wrote: ‘it would seem that the marvellous facilities of Toru’s mind still slumbered, when, in her thirteenth year, her father decided to take his daughters to Europe to learn English and French. To the end of her days Toru was a better French than English scholar. She loved France best, she knew its literature best, she wrote its language with more perfect elegance.’ (Ancient Ballads, xii). Worldcat lists copies at BL and University of Manitoba only outside continental Europe.

Caroline Naudet (1775-1839), one of the very few female caricaturists of her era, she was the daughter of the caricaturist Thomas-Charles Naudet. She is known as the artist of some 25 separate satirical prints c. 1817-1823. The plate depicts an older well-dressed lady sitting for an urbane looking artist. The caption reads:

‘Une dame de qualite faisant faire son portrait s'efforcait de se retrecir la bouche l'artiste s'en appercut et lui dit pour peu que madame le veuille je n'en ferait pas du tout’ (A lady of quality having her portrait done was trying to narrow her mouth. The artist noticed this and said to her, if Madam would like it, I won’t paint it at all). Benezit III, 347.

First edition, an excellent copy, of one of the earliest of Humphreys’ well known medieval revivalist publications, entirely printed in colour in imitation of illuminated manuscripts. Parables of our Lord was issued both in this elaborate stamped black calf binding and a heavier papier mâché binding. The latter often broke the gutta perca binding of the book, leaving the pages loose. In this calf copy all pages are secure.

The colophon reads: ‘In designing the ornaments to the sacred parables contained in this volume, the illuminator has sought to render them in each instance appropriate. The work of illumination was commenced on the first day of May the year of Our Lord MDCCCXLV and terminated on the tenth day of Febry. MDCCCXLVI. HNH.’ McLean, Victorian Publishers’ Book-bindings in Paper p. 13, 51; McLean, Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing (2nd ed.) p. 99-103 and 210.

A superb version, with original illustrations, of the parable of the Return of the Prodigal Son, from the Gospel of St Luke. Number 6 of just 25 copies, each with 16 original signed gouaches by Berque, this being copy number VI.

Jean Berque (Reims, 1896 – Paris, 1954), painter and illustrator, was son of a Champagne wine producer. A student of the Nabis, Félix Vallotton, Maurice Denis and Paul Sérusier, he was one of the first members of the Union Rémoise des Arts Décoratifs and created the Stations of the Cross for the Saint-Nicaise church in Reims. Renowned for his nudes, he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne from 1924 to 1928 and at the Salon des Tuileries between 1927 and 1934. He is best known as a book illustrator and collaborated with François-Louis Schmied (whose inspiration is clear in this work), Philippe Gonin and the Gonin brothers, from Lausanne. He illustrated works by André Gide, Pierre Louys, Colette, Montherlant, André Maurois, Paul Claudel, Anna de Noailles and Paul-Jean Toulet, as well as The Song of Songs.

A large and splendid binding - of one of the notorious forgeries created by Théodore Hagué (1822-1891) one of a considerable number purporting to have been made for Henri II and his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. Hagué (1822-1891) had worked in London for Zaehnsdorf but was living in France in the 1860s when he began creating pastiche bindings and then outright forgeries, offering them for sale first in 1862. It was not until 1875 when examples found their way to London via Bernard Quaritch, who had entered into correspondence with a certain M. Caulin who was offering choice renaissance books, many apparently formerly belonging to a lost collection of Henri II and Diane de Poitiers. Quaritch sold the books almost exclusively to the British collector John Blacker. ‘Needless to say, the ordeal ended well for no one involved: by 1888, John Blacker had spent approximately thirteen years and £36,000 (£3.4 million by modern reckoning) collecting forged bindings, Bernard Quaritch was forced to scramble to cover his losses and hopefully his involvement in the whole charade, and Hagué dropped dead suddenly in 1891. Blacker’s collection was sold at Sotheby’s for £1,907 16s 6d in 1897, which translates to a little over £205,000 in 2017. Henry Folger, who began his collecting in 1883 (when John Blacker was deeply invested in purchasing Caulin/Hague’s forged bindings), kept a copy of the 1897 catalog, which features multiple full-color images made with a combination of letterpress and chromolithography, rare (and expensive) for an auction catalog at the time’ (Elizabeth DeBold, Under Cover: forged Bindings on Display at the Folger, Folger Library Blog, July 19, 2018).

Blacker’s sale included no less than nineteen books purporting to have been made for Henri II and Diane de Poitiers. This one, being a folio, has an especially expansive ‘Grolerieresque’ strapwork designs in black, white and gilt, a scheme continued in colours on the fully decorated gilt and gauffred edges. The design incorporates variations of both their monograms and devices, including Diane’s crescent moon devices (evoking Diane the Huntress, goddess of the moon, and her reputed iridescent beauty) and the famously ambiguous entwined ‘H’ and ‘D’ (the latter actually a ‘C’ for Henri’s Queen, Catherine, but easily readable as ‘D’ for Diana). Sotheby’s, Catalogue of a remarkable Collection of Books in magnificent modern Bindings, formed by an Amateur (recently deceased) (11 Nov. 1897), lot 15. Mirjam Foot, ‘Double Agent: M. Caulin and M. Hagué,’ Book Collector, Special Edition for the 150th Anniversary of Bernard Quaritch (1997), pp. 136-150. Adams B102; Von Gültlingen, Mareschal 14.

An elaborate Victorian decorated binding by Bagster, with accomplished fore-edge decoration in the gothic style.

First edition of this very attractive diminutive almanac (’The Little Harverster’) for the theatre. It contains 12 plates finely printed in tints, all (except the title) portraits of male and female actors in plays then on the Paris stage. They include Mr. Le Peintre as Pothin in Le Voisin, Mr. Vernet in female dress as Isidor in Les Alsaciennes, Mr Gontier as Charvigny in Scribe and Delavigne’s Le Diplomate and Mme Carmouche (Jenny Verpré) as the eponymous La Reine de seize ans. The text includes excerpts and songs from each of the plays described.

A highly evocative trade card for one the most important art presses in Paris. Auguste Delâtre’s long career began in Paris and he opened his first printing house in 1850. He spent several years in London, establishing the engraving section of the South Kensington Museum. Returning to Paris definitively, he was joined in business by his son Eugène. He printed plates by Braquemond, Haden, Jacque, Jacquemart, Méryon, Daubigny, Millet, Rops, Rousseau, and Whistler.

A superb rendition of the temptations familiar to bibliophiles. A collector, seated on the library steps of a well-stocked Parisian book shop is assailed on all sides by monsters and mythical birds and animals offering books in irresistible bindings. This is a characteristic biblio-fantasy by Robida, best known for his futuristic graphic science fictions, such as Le Vingtième Siècle (1883), La Guerre au vingtième siècle (1887) and Le Vingtième siècle. La vie électrique (1890)

Dorbon-Ainé, founded by Louis Dorbon in 1900 was a major Parisian bookshop and publisher, trading in the early twentieth century from the prominent Left Bank location at 53 quai des Grands Augustins. As booksellers, Dorbon specialised in esoteric and occult literature but also published the works of authors such as Xavier Marcel Boulestin, Maurice Des Ombiaux, Claude Farrère, Camille Saint-Saëns, and René Boylesve as well as Jules Lemaître, Claude Debussy, Francis de Miomandre, and the comtesse de Noailles.

An attractive card showing a fashionable young lady browsing a portfolio of lithographs and advertising ‘Lithographie, Autographie, Taille-Douce’. The Rançon firm sold all manner of lithographic supplies, advertising them in the brochure Fabrique spéciale de produits pour la lithographie, autographie, taille-douce (1894) as well as teaching lithography.

A very finely painted devotional miniature with emblems of the Passion and Ressurection: a broken tree (with fire), a flaming heart, discard crowns, rosaries and a cross. In the background are leafy tress and a convent. In the sky is a glowing rebus and a tiny gold butterfly. The text below reads ‘Vuide [sic for ‘vide’] de tout hormis dieu fait son bonheur en ce bas lieu’, the second part of the phrase being rewritten over an erasure. The text, though not identical recalls that of Pascal’s Passion (’Oubli du monde et de tout, hormis Dieu’) — the text recalling his vision of 1654 found sewn into the lining of his coat found on his death.

First edition of a sophisticated manual for young artists, several times reprinted and translated, with first edition very scarce. The largest number of Bouvier’s sequential lessons consider the grinding and mixing of oil colours, with very detailed instructions for proportions of ingredients. The large lithograph plates are equally detailed, showing grinding tools and methods, the ideal colour box, easels, brushes and a well organised palette. Pierre-Louis Bouvier (1765–1836) was one of the most gifted miniaturists of his era. ‘Pierre Louis Bouvier studied under Fabre in Geneva and Vestier in Paris. He established himself in Geneva as a miniaturist, inventing a colour-grinding machine and publishing a Young Artists' and Amateur Painters' Handbook, which became a classic and was translated into German and English. In 1828, Bouvier took over from Reverdin as director of the Geneva École de Figure, a post he held until his death. His best-known works are his portraits of Empress Josephine (private collection), Mme de Staël, Lalime the Engraver, his Self-portrait and his portrait of The Artist's Children (Geneva) and the portrait of John Rocca (Geneva)’ (Benezit).

Each one of 250 copies only, including the first publication of Austen’s fragmentary epistolary novella Sanditon. The two chapters of Persuasion are accompanied by a facsimile of Austen’s diminutive manuscript.

First edition of a confessional novel by Lemonnier (1845–1913), the Belgian writer and art critic who ‘shared the aims of the French symbolists and stimulated a revival of Belgian letters’ (Oxford Companion to French Literature), in which the female narrator writes against a male-dominated society which leaves no room for the possibility of female emancipation such that she is driven to dress as a man. 
This copy belonged to the ‘high priest of fin-de-siècle bibliophilia’ (Silverman, The New Bibliopolis, p. 14), Octave Uzanne (1851–1931).  One of only ten numbered copies printed on vergé de Hollande, it includes a unique printed presentation leaf, ‘Cet exemplaire a été imprimé spécialement pour M. Octave Uzanne’, tipped in as pp. 1–2 and inscribed ‘En fidèle souvenir mon cher Uzanne, le double homage de l’éditeur et de l’auteur.  Camille Lemonnier’. 
‘There is no more original Belgian artist than Camille Lemonnier.  A powerful and fertile writer, he represents Belgian literary activity for more than forty years, until his death in 1913, and even if he reflect the various tendencies of the French mind, and adapt himself to his surroundings, he is Flemish to the backbone in his mystico-sensual leanings, in his pious materialism, … in his Rubens-like fertility and love of colour, dash and force.  It is true that he reminds the reader of Zola, and even of Dickens; but it is above all of Rubens and Jordaens that he makes us think, because, like them, he paints his imagination in the form of ever sensitive emotions’ (Gladys Turquet-Milnes, Some modern Belgian Writers, 1916, p. 87).

Number 104 of 148 copies, this one for Monsieur Pierre Lehideux, with superb illustrations by the Russian-born Montparnasse artist Alexeieff, known for pioneering pinscreen animation in the 1930s. Carteret 219.

First edition, first issue, complete with all subsequently censored text, including the final scene in which the heroine makes love to a partially animated transgender mannequin. Rachilde, who was to style herself as a ‘man of letters’ on her calling cards was just 24 when Monsieur Vénus, her second novel was published in Brussels. The book caused an immediate scandal and was vigorously suppressed by the Belgian and French authorities. Subsequent editions were shorn of the novel’s more shocking passages, which were conveniently attributed to Rachilde’s (probably-fictitiou)s co-author ‘Francis Talman’, whose name appeared on the title page. Some critics refused to believe that a work which frankly recounted the pursuit of sexual pleasure by a noblewoman, Raoule de Vénérande, could possibly be the work of a young woman. It remains an unsettling work, describing Raoule’s treatment of her young male lover, Silvert, who she persistently feminizes and humiliates. Silvert ultimately dies at the hands of one of Raoule’s suitor’s in a duel, and is replaced by her with a mannequin (with real hair, teeth and fingernails) who can be alternately dressed in male and female clothes.

The Belgian authorities sought to destroy as many copies of the first edition as possible, and it is accordingly a noted rarity. We can locate the following copies: BnF, Bibliothèque Jaques Doucet, Institut de France in France and Library of Congress, University of Houston, Vanderbilt University in North America, British Library and Cambridge in the UK and Kb in the Netherlands.

A rare French edition of Surr’s Splendid Misery (1801), perhaps the first in French. It is one of two French translations of 1807, the other entitled Splendeur et souffrance published by Maradan. It is not clear which was the first. Though little remembered, Surr’s several novels of fashionable British society were bestsellers in England and were much read in both France and Germany. He was born in London in c. 1770 and was educated at Christ’s Hospital before becoming a clerk at the Bank of England. Garside, Raven and Schöwerling, The English Novel 1770-1829, 1801, 64 (noting the Splendeur et souffrance edition only. Worldcat lists copies of Latimore at Bn and University of Illinois only; COPAC adds no British copies. For Splendeur et souffrance OCLC lists copies at Bn and Universities of Erfurt and Göttingen only; COPAC adds no British copies.

First collected edition of the first series of Tales of Fashionable Life, Edgeworth’s most ambitious literary project. containing Ennui, Almeria, Madame de Fleury, The Dun, Manoeuvring. In his preface, Richard Lovell Edgeworth notes his daughter's aim ‘to promote, by all her writings, the progress of education, from the cradle to the grave’, and that the present and envisaged volumes of the series were ‘intended to point out some of those errors, to which the higher classes of society are disposed’. A second series appeared in 1812, for which she received £1050 making her the most commercially successful novelist of her age.