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First edition of Lydis’s astrological dream dictionary, complete with the moveable volvelle horoscope and striking plates printed in colours and gold. Among the numerous dream motifs Lydis illustrates: the whore, the angel, flight, locusts, insects (she actually depicts a spider), sea creatures, suicide and the devil.
A fragile book, this is among the early works by Austrian born Lydis (1887-1970) who settled in Paris in 1926. She became known for her daring prints celebrating same-sex and bisexual love (notably her 1926 portfolio, Lesbiennes) and she later illustrated numerous deluxe editions of Boccaccio, Louÿs, Baudelaire, Mirbeau and Valéry. Lydis had no formal artistic training (or at least her education is obscure) but her work was no doubt inspired by the freedom of twentieth-century Paris. She escaped the Nazis during the occupation, living briefly with her partner Erica Marx in England, before the couple emigrated to Buenos Aires. Correa, Mariette Lydis, 4.4 (with an estimated edition of 150 copies).

Copy number VII of 100 copies (total edition 111 copies only) printed for Les Cent Une, Société de femmes bibliophiles. All were printed on paper watermarked ‘Les Cent Une’ and this is copy number 5 of the 10 tirage de tete copies, and printed for member Madame Jacques Gompel. The text is after the 1556 French edition by André Jaulme (complete with authentic contractions) while the superb visual interpretations by Mariette Lydis include two of her characteristic decorated maps (both are signed). This is one of the early publications for the women’s book collecting club founded in Paris by the Princesse Schakhowskoy in 1926 as a direct riposte to ‘Les Cent’ — a bibliophile circle which then included no women among its members. Les Cent Une issued editions limited to the 101 members only and a handful of collaborators, usually no more than once a year, and is still in existence. Carteret IV, 322.

First edition of this survey of the fundamental changes made to female education in France between 1879 and 1887, France fundamentally reformed female education, moving from Catholic-dominated, basic instruction to a state-run, secular, and more academic system. Legislation such as the 1880 so-called Camille Sée law, established the first public secondary schools for girls (lycées) to produce educated ‘republican mothers,’ focusing on academic study rather than just needlework. The author was deputy director of the French ministry of public education. He dedicates the book to Camille Sée.

First edition of this rare practical programme for female secondary education. The so-called Duruy Reforms of 1865 instituted a new programme of secondary instruction geared towards practical careers in business and administration. While they also reformed primary education for girls, they did little for their secondary education, as noted in the foreword here by Madame Charles Sauvestre, instutrice. She concludes that the private initiatives are the only way of circumventing this, and the Guide pratique pour les écoles professionnelles de jeunes filles is a brief but complete guide to the practicalities and particularities of secondary schools for girls, starting with budget estimates for their foundation and maintenance. Much of detail is provided by the tables, which include three-year curricula with breakdowns of the necessary subjects, encompassing, letters, sciences, arts, and practical studies. ‘Letters’ comprise literacy in French and other living languages (not Latin), as well as history, geography, cosmography, domestic economy and ethics (religion is absent). ‘Sciences’ include mathematics (especially mental and commercial arithmetic), accounting, botany, zoology and mineralogy. ‘Arts’ include writing, drawing, geometry, ornament, industrial drawing, engraving, painting on porcelain and singing (formal music and panel painting notably absent). ‘Practical studies’ include couture (dressmaking), embroidery, tapestry, artificial flowers, lacemaking and paper crafts. Each of these subjects is broken down further into specific lessons with their place in a termly and weekly timetable divided into hours. A final chapters gives recommendations for the organisation of a library and a list of recommended books and authors. WorldCat: Library of Congress only outside Europe.

First edition, presentation copy, arguing for the proper provision of university education for women. The author surveys recent developments around the world, notably in the United States, where the women’s education movement has been most marked (and citing the Philadelphia medical school and the University of Michigan as examples) and in Great Britain (citing University College, London, Girton and Somerville Colleges at Cambridge and Oxford respectively). WorldCat locates a single copy: Università Bocconi, Milan.

First edition of one of the celebrated French clairvoyant’s earliest and rarest works, in which she reported an angelic appearance at Louis XVI’s tomb and revealed the contents of a tablet of prophecies for the era of the Restoration of the French monarchy. Like Le Normand’s later works it is couched in terms of dreams, predictions and angelic interventions. Marie-Anne Le Normand (1772–1843) was a celebrated (but also notorious) clairvoyant. Famed throughout Europe for her exclusive clientele, she popularised cartomancy and spawned an enormous wave of imitators. At the height of her career she claimed to have advised the likes of Robespierre, Talleyrand, Metternich, the Empress Josephine and the Russian Emperor Alexander; others argued that the whole thing was a sham, and she was frequently arrested, spending several weeks in prison. She is perhaps best remembered today for the cartomancy tarot decks named after her (’Lenormand cards’).
Le Normand was not only successful as a clairvoyant, but as a businesswoman, publisher and bookseller, with most of her works carrying her own imprint (as here) and sold at her shop in the rue de Tournon. At this early date she evidently operated her own press, with the half-title giving an address in nearby rue de Seine. Later works were generally printed for her by other presses. Caillet 6515. WorldCat: British Library only. While there are several copies in French libraries it is apparently absent from the Bibliothèque nationale. Arbour, Dictionnaire des femmes libraires en France, p. 343.

First edition of Le Norman’s predictions issued in the wake of the July Revolution of 1830 and the restoration of the monarchy under Louis Philippe, events welcomed by Le Normand, who saw the ghost of Louis XVI as her protector. Like her previous collections, it consists of accounts of her ‘visions intuitives’ and ‘Révélations politiques, symboliques, prophètiques, somnambulismes etc’. Throughout the nineteenth century, writers and pamphleteers repeated that tale of the ‘Little Red Man’ purported to be from an old folk tale dating back to the creation of the Tuileries Palace (1564) in which Le Petit Homme Rouge (a genie, or ghost) had appeared to the kings and queens living in the palace on the eve of great events, from Catherine de Medici to Napoleon. Here Le Normand uses him to recount the counsel given to Napoleon at Malmaison in 1793, that France could never be a democracy. Chapter five is set at the Scottish royal palace of Holyrood where the deposed Charles X had lived between 1796-1803
The title verso has an advert for eleven works hitherto published and still marketed by Le Normand at her shop in rue de Torunon, all priced, together with three fothcoming works ‘sous presse’ and a collected works in 10 volumes. Caillet 6514 (’Ouvrage peu commun’).

A spectacular facsimile edition of one of the most celebrated books of hours of the fifteenth century, the illumination by Jean Bourdichon reproduced in superb chromolithography by Léon Curmer. This copy additionally contains twelve sumptuous illuminated calendar borders as copied in gouache, watercolour and gold by Curmer’s anonymous copyist, identifiable through his signatures in this copy as the master facsimilist, Christian Schultz (1817-1883). His twelve superb illuminations show the occupations of the twelve months, including winter fireside dining, pruning, a garden, reaping, harvesting, threshing, grape treading, ploughing and sowing, feeding hogs and killing swine.
This was one of Curmer’s most ambitious publications, requiring painstaking copying from the original manuscript kept in the French Bibliothèque nationale. His methods are not well understood, but each leaf was first copied in gouache by skilled facsimilists who were almost never credited in the final publication. This copy, with the twelve calendar miniatures in gouache allows us to identify Christian Schultz as at least one (if not the only) copyist for this project, with several bearing his minute signature, not included in the final corresponding chromolithograph. He is perhaps better known for his subsequent work for the British Arundel Society, copying Flemish masterpieces such as the Ghent Altarpiece for their important and popular facsimiles. He had been born in Kassel in 1817, was trained in Germany as a draughtsman and studied lithography in Munich (Ledger, A Study of the Arundel Society 1848-1897, Oxford DPhil, 1978) In his work for the Arundel Society he made his copies by painting over photographic images of the work, and it is interesting to speculate how he created the Anne of Brittany facsimiles. Certainly, the whole book had been photographed (and reproduced in the text volume) but his finished miniatures are on fine but not transparent paper, and show no sign of preliminary markings. It would be a worthwhile project in the developing study of nineteenth-century manuscript facsimiles to compare digitised samples with both the monochrome photographs and original gouache miniatures in this copy.
Illustration attributed to Jean Poyet until 1868 when newly discovered documents proved it the work of Jean Bourdichon. Cf. Bourdichon, J. Les Heures d'Anne de Bretagne. Paris, 1946

A splendid bibliophilic caricature. ‘The bouquiniste in pleasure’ shows a crouching bookseller, his sleeves made of reused book-covers, offering a variety of books to a voracious bibliophile, whose pockets are already stuffed with treasures. The print is signed simply ‘XX’ but is attributed to Auger by the Bibliographie de France of 1817. Adrien-Victor Auger (1787-1854) had been a student of David, he exhibited at the Salons of 1810, 1824 and 1834 and satirised fashionable Paris society through his lively engraved and lithographed prints.

Despite his former military success in service in the American and French Revolutionary wars Custine was found guilty of treason by a majority vote of the Revolutionary Tribunal on 27 August, and guillotined the following day. ‘Custine (an ex-noble) was guillotined on 28 Aug. (in spite of his previous victories), accused of having treacherously caused the fall of Frankfort, Condé, Valenciennes, and Mayence. According to the English newspapers, he “kissed the crucifix, embraced his confessor... and at last was brought to the guillotine by force”’ (BM Satires).
‘Custine stands on the scaffold beside the guillotine (left). Four ragged ruffians are about to bind him to the plank on which he is to lie; one says, “By Gar so we will serve all de Generals who do not conquer de whole World, and give them de Libertè [sic]”. Custine says, “Pardon me Heaven for having been leagued with such a set of Blood hounds”. A stout soldier pushes a weeping priest, who says “Let us Pray”, down the steps (right) which lead up to the scaffold, saying, “Go to de diable & Your Prayers both”. Below (right) stand republican soldiers with fixed bayonets much caricatured. On the extreme left a man kneels at the guillotine holding his hat in place of the usual basket; he says, “Begar I will have a Drink of de blood.” BM Satires, 8340; De Vinck 6176; Krumbhaar 785.

‘Down, down, to Hell & say A Female Arm has made one bold Attempt to free her Country’ reads the speech emerging from Charlotte Corday’s mouth as she holds a bloodied dagger, just withdrawn from the body of Marat, who has fallen to the ground. The subtitle reads: ‘Who [Corday], while he [Marat] was villifying some of the more moderate men in the Convention and asserting that they should lose their heads stabed [sic] him saying, Villain thy death shall precede theirs.’ Charlotte Corday was condemned to the guillotine for the murder of Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat. Aged just 25 at her death, she was later nicknamed l’ange de l’assassinat (the Angel of Assassination) for her actions and was posthumously revered by Royalists for her stand against the injustices of the era of the Terror.
News of Marat’s assassination (on 13 July), without details, reached London on 22 July making this the earliest dated British print to depict her. Several later prints, including another by Gillray, depicted her trial and execution. BM Satires 8336; De Vinck 5298; Krumbhaar 1077.

First published in 1738, Soumille’s illustrated guide to trictrac (a variant of the game of backgammon) was reprinted several times in the eighteenth century, the present 1756 edition probably being the second (another edition appeared at Avignon in the same year). This copy contains a delightful contemporary first person ex libris inscription giving voice to the book itself:
‘je suis a qui je suis, a autre ne veut être, et si perdut je suis promtement je veux être remit a qui je suis Alexandre est mon maïtre’. (’I belong to who I belong to; I do not wish to belong to another, and if I am lost, I want to be promptly returned to the one I belong to. Alexandre is my master.’) Barbier II, 565.

First published in 1766 and memorably called ‘that vivacious compost of obscenity and adventure’ (Charles Whibley, 1898) Le Compère Matthieu proved to be among the most popular satirical ‘philosophical novels’ of the ancien régime. As frequently suppressed as it was republished, it makes a strong showing among confiscations tabulated in the Robert Darnton’s Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France 1769-1789. Strongly materialist, anti-establishment and anticlerical it was wrongly (if understandably) attributed to Voltaire. It continued to be published after the Revolution, but no longer surreptitiously and the present edition (often referred to as the best) is known in elegant large papier vélin copies like the present, with the rather gothic plates avant la lettre. The fine binding is by Bozerian le Jeune (Virgil François Bozerian 1765-1826) perhaps the finest and certainly the most emblematic bookbinders of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, who notably produced several hundred bindings for the French Imperial Library. This copy was in the library of Claude-Auguste Genard (1819–1908) of Grenoble, then that of New York collector (and early Grolier Club member) Frederic Robert Halsey (1847-1918). The Huntington Library purchased the Halsey library en bloc in 1915, but sold many duplicates or other unwanted volumes. Cohen-De Ricci, 336: ‘Les exemplaires in-8, sur papier vélin avec les figures avant la lettre sont recherchés’.

A popular pocket dream dictionary abridged from Vulson de la Colombière’s influential Le Palais des curieux first published in 1660 and widely disseminated in popular form. The foot of the final page includes a series of numbers offered as the most likely to be drawn in the national lottery. René Helot, La Bibliothèque bleue en Normandie (1928). 12

Mandiargues eroto-surrealist poem ‘Dalila Exaltée’ paired with Bona’s extraordinary etched plate, in the first volume of this important series whose aim was to create a dialogue between contemporary poetry and modern printmaking.
Published under the direction of Odette Lazar-Vernet, the Paroles Peintes series was dedicated to the presentation of otherwise unpublished poetry and original etchings by an international roster of modernist artists. It ran to five volumes between 1962 and 1975. This is the first volume and presents the work of Bona and André Pieyre de Mandiargues alongside the work of Chagall, Ernst and Braque, among others.
This copy is number 193 copies of 200 copies (there were also 58 hors commerce copies). The texts are 14 poems by Aragon, Arp, Albert-Birot, Follain, Guillevic, Joyeux, Laude, Lescure, Liberati, Mandiargues, Paulhan, De Solier, Tapié and Tardieu paired with 14 plates by Chagall, Magnelli, Zadkine, Gilioli, Ubac, Bissière, Jacobsen, Fiorini, Ernst, Braque, Dufour, Lepatre and Vieillard.
Bona de Mandiargues, or simply ‘Bona’ (1926-2000) remains one of the most intriguing women of the French Surrealist movement. Best known for her fabric collages (she cut up her husband’s clothes and called them ragarts) she also illustrated a number of books, including several with etched plates issued in limited editions. A frank memoir of Bona’s childhood in an Italian villa, Vivre en Herbe (Gallimard, 2001), recalls the early inspiration of her flamboyant artist uncle, Filippo de Pisis, but also episodes of disturbing abuse and the terrors of the Second World War. In Paris in the 1940s she met the poet Pierre de Mandiargues (she married him, twice) and was drawn into the circle of André Breton. Taking inspiration from journeys to Mexico, the world of the Surrealists and her own ‘inner eye’, she pursued a singular artistic vision. She notably took the motif of the snail as an emblem (admiring its wholeness, its hermaphroditism and its self-sufficiency). Though her work was exhibited regularly, her first institutional retrospective was held at the Nivola Museum in Sardinia (2022).

A rare surrealist broadside, subscribed by André Breton, Bona and André Pieyre de Mandiargues among 29 others, against and exhibition and conference held at the Galerie Kléber by the right wing abstract artists Georges Mathieu and Simon Hantaï. The event, known as Les Ceremonies commemorated the Catholic Inquisition’s 1277 condemnation for heresy of the teachings of the Aristotelian scholar Siger de Brabant at the University of Paris, whereby the church attempted to halt the revival of classical thought in the Middle Ages. The Surrealists, shocked by the religious and deliberately reactionary nature of this event, responded with this broadside Coup de Semonce (’Warning Shot’) illustrated by Bona.
Bona de Mandiargues, or simply ‘Bona’ (1926-2000) remains one of the most intriguing women of the French Surrealist movement. Best known for her fabric collages (she cut up her husband’s clothes and called them ragarts) she also illustrated a number of books, including several with etched plates issued in limited editions. A frank memoir of Bona’s childhood in an Italian villa, Vivre en Herbe (Gallimard, 2001), recalls the early inspiration of her flamboyant artist uncle, Filippo de Pisis, but also episodes of disturbing abuse and the terrors of the Second World War. In Paris in the 1940s she met the poet Pierre de Mandiargues (she married him, twice) and was drawn into the circle of André Breton. Taking inspiration from journeys to Mexico, the world of the Surrealists and her own ‘inner eye’, she pursued a singular artistic vision. She notably took the motif of the snail as an emblem (admiring its wholeness, its hermaphroditism and its self-sufficiency). Though her work was exhibited regularly, her first institutional retrospective was held at the Nivola Museum in Sardinia (2022).

First edition, number 144 of 200 copies. Excerpts from the French philosopher Jean Grenier’s forthcoming autobiography (Gallimard, 1957) published for the ‘Chemin des Sources’ series by the Librairie Franco-Egyptienne in Cairo. It includes two small vignettes by Bona de Mandiargues (née Tibertelli), one a flying bird, the other a surrealist crouching fish-woman. Grenier is perhaps best remembered as mentor to the young Albert Camus at the Grand Lycée of Algiers. At the time of publication Bona was married to poet Pierre de Mandiargues, and was integrated into the surrealist circle around André Breton.
Bona de Mandiargues, or simply ‘Bona’ (1926-2000) remains one of the most intriguing women of the French Surrealist movement. Best known for her fabric collages (she cut up her husband’s clothes and called them ragarts) she also illustrated a number of books, including several with etched plates issued in limited editions. A frank memoir of Bona’s childhood in an Italian villa, Vivre en Herbe (Gallimard, 2001), recalls the early inspiration of her flamboyant artist uncle, Filippo de Pisis, but also episodes of disturbing abuse and the terrors of the Second World War. In Paris in the 1940s she met the poet Pierre de Mandiargues (she married him, twice) and was drawn into the circle of André Breton. Taking inspiration from journeys to Mexico, the world of the Surrealists and her own ‘inner eye’, she pursued a singular artistic vision. She notably took the motif of the snail as an emblem (admiring its wholeness, its hermaphroditism and its self-sufficiency). Though her work was exhibited regularly, her first institutional retrospective was held at the Nivola Museum in Sardinia (2022). Rare: Worldcat lists the Bn and Bibliothèque Jerôme Doucet copies in France, the Harvard copy in the US and another at the American University, Cairo.

The largest and most elaborate of Diane de Bournazel’s recent books, Rondes de nuit explores the possibilities and mysteries of the night, both from the human perspective of sleep, rest and dreaming, as well as the unseen life of the natural world in darkness and the infinite expanses of the night sky. At the centre of every page is a circular void, corresponding with depictions of the full moon at either end of the book, which can be seen in every opening. Each circular hole is illuminated to form a rebus or mandala, sometimes reminiscent of the visionary medieval manuscripts of the contemplative mystic, Hildegard of Bingen (notably Scivias and Liber divinorum operum). Elsewhere, figures float in space (one can be rocked back-and-forth as a moveable part) or participate in an eternal dance of life (and death). Lest we should see this as an evocation of the books of a distant past, a tiny floating space station against the night sky reminds of the artist’s contemporaneity.

First and only edition of this elegant little volume, a collection of witty verses and songs dedicated by the obviously cultivated members of the Normandy Société du Havre to their wives and daughters, sometimes on the occasion of a marriage or some other event. The sole copy located is in the Le Havre municipal library.

First edition. Copies of Louis XVI’s will were widely circulated in facsimile at the time of the Restoration of the monarchy after the fall of Napoleon. They were first printed as official copies engraved from the original manuscripts, circulated to members of the houses of representatives and issued for sale, as here in their officially sanctioned version engraved directly by Piquet from tracings of the original manuscript. The final page of the four-page facsimile of Louis’ will bears the imprint: ‘Calqué par Pierre Picquet sur l’original écrit de la main du Roi’. Picquet is described as ‘graveur d’écritures’ in the imprint, a speciality for which he appears to enjoyed royal patronage. His finely-engraved copies were widely pirated by enterprising engravers and booksellers and sold to the public in Paris in various other forms. Besides his facsimiles, Picquet engraved several writing manuals.
Louis XVI’s last will and testament, written on December 25, 1792, in the Temple prison, is a deeply personal, religious document in which the deposed king proclaimed his innocence, forgave his enemies, and entrusted his family to God. He reaffirmed his Catholic faith, urged his son not to seek revenge for his death, and expressed hope for the unity of France. It is accompanied here by a letterpress account of the king’s last days, together with the circumstances of his and Marie-Antoinette’s will. There are also engraved copies of both their signatures, together with those of their children Élisabeth Marie and Louis (both also executed).