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First edition for the Société des Cent Femmes and with the Lydis illustrations, of an erotic collection first published in 1908. This is copy 83 for Madame André Boivin. Marguerite Burnat-Provins was considerably ahead of her time with this sensuous text of female desire and description of the nude male body, using language that male poets had historically used to describe female nudes.

The women’s bibliophile circle, Société des Cent Femmes amies des livres was founded in 1927. This was a subscription society, producing a series of well-printed books between 1927 and 1968, usually with woodcut or engraved illustrations, limited to 130 copies only. The club was limited, as the name denotes, to 100 women at any one time and founding member included the comtesse de Noailles, Madame Funck-Brentano and the Princesse Ghika (née Hazel-Marie Paliner-Singer). It was one of two major women’s bibliophilic clubs founded in the 1920s, the other being Les Cent Une founded in 1926, who also commissioned a book from Lydis. Worldcat lists no copies outside continental Europe.

First edition with the Lydis illustrations. One of a total edition of 131 copies, this one of the 115 on papier de Rives). The illustrations, many in the style of illuminated miniatures or icons, are transformed through brilliant pochoir colouring executed in the workshop of master colourist Jean Saude, reproducing the artist’s signature on each.

These verse litanies, after the traditional catholic Marian litany, are entirely the creation of Armand Godoy and were first published (unillustrated) in 1930. Symbolist poet Godoy was born in Havana in 1880 and spent the first part of his life in Cuba and Peru, working in banking and the tobacco trade, before emigrating to France in 1919 with the express intention of becoming a poet ‘dans la langue de Baudelaire’. Much influenced by the Parnassians and the symbolists he was also a major collector of books, manuscripts and prints, amassing an unrivalled collection of Baudelaireiana. Among his numerous small-scale published works in French is his translation of Poe’s Raven — Le Corbeau d’Edgar Poe (Émile-Paul frères, 1929, with a frontispiece by Lydis). Worldcat lists copies at Princeton and Bridwell only outside continental Europe (to which we add the Edinburgh copy.

A scarce and substantial brochure for a charity gala, to which Mariette Lydis contributed eight full-page illustrations (some for adverts) mainly of young girls or women. Other artistic contributors include Marie Laurencin, Raoul Dufy and Vertès and there are further contributions from Jean Cocteau, Daisy Fellowes, Arthur Honneger, Pierre Mac-Orlan, François Mauriac, André Maurois and Colette. Lydis is the largest single contributor. The Bal des petits lits was an annual fundraising event for the benefit to sick and disadvantaged children and attracted the patronage of leading artistic figures each year.

First edition with the Lydis illustrations, of Colette’s coming-of-age novel (first published in 1900-3 with debatable contribution from her then-husband, Willy). This is copy number 47 of 100 on Lafuma with plates in 2 states, after copies on Japon and Hollande, of a total edition of 1585 copies on different papers. Though not called for copies on Lafuma, this copy has four original drawings bound as frontispieces, each signed by the artist. Three of them are of Claudine herself, the fourth, a delightful cat.

There was mutual admiration (and perhaps more) between Colette and Lydis, the former having written an admiring note on the artist for the programme of the 1934 Bal des petits lits blancs, which Lydis had illustrated.

A special number, devoted entirely the art of the book around the world, which includes 2 reproductions from Lydis illustrations.

First edition with illustrations by Mariette Lydis. Le Livre de Goha le simple, by two Egyptian Jewish authors, first appeared in 1919 (Calmann-Lévy) but this 1926 deluxe illustrated edition formed part of the Collection de chefs-d’oeuvre series. It was an important commission for Lydis. Goha the Fool was immensely popular, having narrowly missed the 1919 Goncourt prize (which went to Proust that year). ‘It is possible to see the beginning of Levantine literature ― rooted in the realities of the Middle East and influenced by European culture ― in Goha le Simple … This sad and cynical love story, which employs the prototype of Goha, the hero of many Middle Eastern tales describes the lives of the common folk of Cairo before the spread of Western cultural influence’ (Mongrels or Marvels: the Levantine Writings of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff, ed. Starr & Somekh, 2011). Lydis’s illustrations, evidently reduced from larger drawings are striking ― mostly depicting women of all ages and classes. This is one of 1000 copies on Rives (after 100 on Hollande and 100 on Annam).

First edition with the illustrations by Lydis, one of 350 copies on Rives (total edition 382).

The novel first appeared in 1936. Montherlant is remembered partly through the lens of Simone de Beauvoir, who chastised his misogyny and anti-feminism in The Second Sex. The disdain for adult homosexuality he expressed in public took on disturbing dimensions when viewed in the context of his private paedophilia, fully revealed only after his death. He was, however, an important connection for Mariette Lydis and was one of her first acquaintances on her arrival in Paris; he later wrote several appreciations of her work.

Number 9 of 100 copies of a separately-issued lithograph, coloured by the artist and exhibited at London’s Leicester Gallery in 1935. A reviewer in The Connoisseur wrote of that exhibition:
‘February’s triple bill at the Leicester Galleries began with a display of paintings, drawings and prints by Mariette Lydis, a Viennese, domiciled in Paris. She has been a prolific illustrator. No fewer than thirty volumes with drawings by her have been published, copies of which have been acquired by many of the principal national libraries. Her work may be seen in the public galleries of Paris — the Jeu du Paume and the Luxembourg — of Milan, Amsterdam, Vienna, Leipzig, and elsewhere. She has also been accorded the honour of having a self-portrait received in the Uffizi Gallery. Her travels have taken her all over Europe, to America and to Morocco, and she is said to be entirely self-taught.
In the drawings, which seem to be mainly studies or projects, her attitude, and quite rightly, appears to be objective. Often her subjects are viewed as so much still-life, but they show considerable delicacy, if not variety, in handling. Her paintings evince, especially in such subjects as the dream-like Nuages, more of imagination and more of sensibility. Sainte Vierge Enfant has a pleasant cameo-like quality, and Javanaise, considerable attractiveness. For ourselves, we find her most interesting in her etchings and lithographs. A series of the latter, entitled L’Art d’Aimer and the map like Oracle, are both imaginative and original’.

First edition, a charming children’s book with a Gallo-Roman setting, illustrated throughout by Lydis.

First edition, tirage de tête, copy number 6 of 30 copies on Japon (total edition 1100). A witty appreciation of Joseph Delteil, in the form of an ironic literary hagiography by his friends. Novelist and critic Joseph Delteil was associated primarily with the Surrealists, but he was an early admirer of the work of Mariette Lydis and also her lover for part of 1928. It was Delteil who observed that Lydis ‘paints with her breasts’, a remark which proved to be a controversial subversion of Renoir’s claim to ‘paint with my prick’ (Gluzman, ‘Desire, Mystery, Devotion: On Mariette Lydis’s Trajectory’, ISFLAA NY, ‘From the Desk of...’ 22 November 2024).

A unique artist’s book evidently made by Mariette Lydis for her subject, Basia Laffon (1910-2000). The title on the wooden boards and the title-page is lettered by hand (gold and red respectively) and the latter is signed and dated. The first drawing is a magnificent portrait head in pencil on vellum, with lips and eyes heightened with colour, followed by three more large portraits of Basia: seated in a loose dress, standing in buttoned shorts and sandals, and breastfeeding an infant. If the volume is then turned over and opened, a very different sequence appears. It opens with three pages of letterpress text ― the artist’s passionate appreciation of her subject followed by three superb nude drawings of Basia.
The printed dedication must have been composed and set (in handsome Garamond italic) solely for this unique copy. We can find no trace of it elsewhere, and since it leaves no doubt as to the strength and quality of the artist’s feelings for her model, we reproduce it in full. It is also one of the few sustained examples of Lydis’s writing from this period and we cannot fail to be struck by her appreciation of a young woman described in androgynous terms as a young ‘éphèbe’ (a young Greek warrior) and as an epitome of modernity. The artist would have been 46 or 47 when she drew Basia Laffon (a nickname for Barbara Sienkiewicz), then 23 or 24. She is recognisible as the model for several of the illustrations for Lydis’ edition of Sappho published in 1933 (and she received a specially coloured copy of that book from the artist).
Basia, jeune femme longue et souple, rieuse et très prête aux larmes, toute d’aujourd’hui, toute clarté ― abandon ― franchise.
Elle inonde la chambre dans laquelle elle entre d’un rayonnement ingénu, d’une tendresse tremblante des ses douces folies féminines. A la fois jeune pâtre, mère louve, paysanne solide qui ne craint pas le froid mais les fantômes, Basia transplantée dans n’importe quelle situation sera toujours à sa place.
La maison de Basia donne sur un vieux jardin. Inutile de sommer, la porte est toujours ouverte. C’est une maison adorable, une des rares maisons où je me sente à mon aise ; et ce n’est pas à cause des deux Mariette Lydis accrochés aux murs ; c’est que j’aime respirer l’air de ces pièces : j’aime la cage ronde habité par une rangée de ces tout petits oiseaux frileux qui meurent constamment sans qu’on puisse les pleurer, l’aquarium plein des gros poissons chinois et ventru, l’ecran de papillons de toute taille et multicolores.
Voicie le fond sur lequel se détache Basia. Un irish terrier et un chat vaguement persan complètent l’ameublement.
Basia a deux enfants qu’elle a faits toute seule et qu’on lui reproche.
Son apparence de jeune éphèbe aux seins irréprochables est toute neuve ; elle est neuve dans ce qu’elle dit, qu’elle fait, sans pose, sans artifice.
D’une simplicité vibrante, d’une spontanéité violent, elles est prête à l’attaque, à la défense, à l’émotion ― toujours. Même habillée, elle est nue, d’une nudité d’enfant ou d’animal, ingénuement, sans affectation.
Elle pose de grands pieds aux orteils bien séparés sur un tapis gris clair.
Toute impulsion ― oui, non ― sans réflexion aucune (et c’est bien ainsi), toute instinct, elle est faite d’élans, d’enthousiasmes, d’un bel égoïsme dans le sens grec du mot : ELLE ― ce qu’elle aime et peu d’autre chose.
Voìla Basia.
The portrait on vellum seems to have been something of an experiment for Mariette Lydis (in keeping with the modernity of her appreciation for Basia). It is set within a paper frame with clear a cellophane guard (which has subsequently rippled, perhaps encouraging the vellum below to do the same (to a lesser extent). Lydis had recently completed a commission for the Nonesuch Press in London, illustrating The Greek Portrait (1934). The publisher experimented with encasing the plates in clear cellophane, a material largely untested in book production, which later shrank in most copies, leaving the plates slightly cockled. It is interesting to see Lydis use the same here in this one-off production.

First edition, a total edition of 75 numbered copies, with plates signed by the artist, this being one of 60 copies on Hollande. Lucian’s text dates from the second century AD and the translation used here is that of Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt, of the seventeenth century. ‘Although on the periphery of the classical canon, Lucian’s text was popular with European and American audiences in the 1920s and 1930s as work that stimulated discourse on alternative sexualities’ (Paula Birnbaum, Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities, 2011, p. 208, and after, discussing a specific print from this edition which ‘celebrates the sexuality of a lesbian couple on the Greek island of Lesbos... represented by two modern-looking, naked women embracing passionately’).
This copy contains the printed notice that it was reserved for the artists Antoine ‘Tony’ Marie Charles de Lyée de Belleau and Annie de Villeneuve-Esclapon, on the occasion of their marriage. Carteret IV, p. 235: ‘Intéressant publication’. Worldcat: Bibliothèque nationale, Montpellier, Yale, Library of Congress, Boston Public Library only, to which we add the Edinburgh copy.

First edition of this collection with the Lydis illustrations. Number 85 of 165 copies and contains the inscription: ‘A Ida, avec toute mon amitié — en souvenir d’une semaine heureuse passée auprès d’elle. Mariette Lydis Paris 1934’ likely to have been addressed to the Russian-born dancer Ida Rubinstein.

Chant des Amazones is a celebration of female athleticism in verse, prose and image and is dedicated to ‘une jeune fille victorieuse dans la course des 1,000 mètres’. The texts are drawn from Montherlant’s Les Onze devant la porte dorée (1924) which he had written against the background of preparations for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Women’s participation in Olympic athletics was then extremely limited, but the decade after 1924 witnessed its rapid expansion and a general enthusiasm for women’s sport, reflected in this book. Well-known as a writer, Montherlant was an important contact for Lydis throughout her career though his posthumous reputation has revealed him as a serial pederast and dabbler in right-wing politics. His later works were marked by distinct anti-feminism and misogyny. Lydis’ illustrations are fresh and well-meaning, but her evident sexualisation of pubescent girls is troubling to the modern eye. The book was issued in handsome silver, green and turquoise lithographed wrappers.

Rare first edition of the memoirs of the great circus performer Jules Léotard, pioneer of the flying trapeze who inspired the 1867 song ‘The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze’. A second edition of his Mémoires appeared in the same year, with the same pagination, but giving ‘deuxième édition’ on the title — almost all library copies appear to be of this later edition. The superb comic lithograph by Durandeau shows Léotard trapezing over the city of Paris, while adoring female fans cry out to him from the rooftops (some flying heart-shaped kites). With Blondin, Léotard was one of the first great celebrities of the circus, when he visited London in 1861, Charles Dickens wrote: ‘I have been beguiled into seeing Léotard, and it is at once the most fearful and most graceful thing I have ever seen.’ (Letter to Macready, June 11, 1861).

A most attractive Catholic primer for the communion, evidently bound as a gift with an unusual Berlin work embroidered panel. ‘Berlin wool work is embroidery with Berlin wools or any type of thread or beads on canvas by means of copying a coloured chart known as a Berlin pattern. Almost exclusively confined to the 19th century, Berlin wool derived its name from the wool that came from Merino sheep in Saxony. It was taken to Gotha to be spun and on to Berlin to be dyed... Prior to the introduction of Berlin patterns it was very rare to find any indication about the choice of colour or threads. Berlin patterns were always coloured by hand at first, until the emergence of industrial printing techniques’ (V&A). Though the style originated in Germany, Berlin work was enthusiastically practised by women all over Europe and in North America

Sole edition of a rare anonymous poetical collection, comprising heroic odes dedicated to a variety of men (and one woman) whose names are as equally disguised as the author’s and a series of shorter verses which are lightheartedly erotic and sometimes overtly pornographic. It is rare now to find a printed collection so resistant to attribution. It does not appear in the bibliographies of Cioransecu, Gay or Pia (as one might expect) and only Conlon hazards a guess at its authorship, suggesting it may be by the same ‘Monsieur B***’ to whom Rochon de Chabannes dedicated a Satyre sur les hommes, but this seems far from certain. The opening poem, ‘Épitre au Chevalier d’Har’ with a comparison of its subject to Dryden, Pope and Milton and its invocations of the names of Grafton, Mulgrave and Roscommon, may turn out to be useful for future attribution. The book bears what appears to be a genuine Geneva imprint of the Cramer brothers, official publishers of Voltaire.

None of the verses we have sampled appear to have been anthologised elsewhere, which is particularly rare for the kind of erotic poetry occupying half of the volume. Notable among these is a verse devoted to the quasi-Viagran effects of coffee, as experienced by young Alix and a cleric. Such verses were often shared among coterie writers and tend to appear in several collections, both manuscript and print — which seems not to be the case here.

This copy bears the inscription of Jules Bobin (1834-1905) bibliophile, friend and executor of Huysmans’ will — a collector who specialised in this kind of rare curiosa.

Conlon, p. 412. WorldCat locates copies at the Taylorian Institute, Oxford and Indiana only (discounting the BL copy which lacks pp. 1-66). There is also a copy at the Bn.

First editions of all three of George Auriol’s monogram books, with a rich array of designs for his artistic and literary colleagues in Paris and further afield. Polymathic poet and songwriter, part of the Chat Noir (along with his lifelong friend Erik Satie) Auriol created designs that became emblematic of Art nouveau Paris, together with his typography for the Metropolitain railway and type designs adapted by Peignot. The three volumes of monograms include marks for himself and his closest collaborator, Henri Rivière, as well as Stéphane Mallarmé, Octave Uzanne, the Théâtre du Chat Noir, Edmond Haraucourt, Anatole France, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen, Octave Mirbeau, Aristide Briand and Woodrow Wilson. Most display the clear influence of the pervading japonisme in contemporary Parisian design, with Auriol adapting the Japanese quasi-heraldic culture of the pictographic Japanese ‘mon’ to western lettering.

Publishers for whom Auriol supplied monograms included Ernest Flammarion, Quillot, Larousse, Hachette, Peignot et fils, Henri Laurens and we also find the earliest logo for Cadbury’s chocolate (1905, in the volume for 1907).

Each volume of the set is of regular trade issue (nonetheless issued in small numbers) and the 1924 volume bears an elegant inscription by Auriol in red ink to the publisher Pierre Monot, at the Larousse Mensuel — one of Auriol’s most important publishing connections. It also contains an autograph letter from Edmond Lauren on notepaper bearing his Auriol-designed notepaper. The 1907 volume contains two prospectuses.

First edition of a rare pamphlet issued in the wake of the decree issued by the police prefect Claude Mangin on April 14, 1830, prohibiting prostitutes ‘from appearing, at any time and under any pretext, in the passages, in public gardens and on the boulevards’ and ordering them to engage in prostitution only in licensed brothels. This measure lasted only three months, but was enough for its opponents to publish dozens of pamphlets. All these occasional pieces are extremely rare, including this one.

Purporting to be the work of a Matrone, jurisconsulte de ces dames this enquiry and petition is satirical in tone, and yet still gives voice to the women it represents, by outlining in detail how Mangin’s heavy-handed decree would effect them at various levels, pointing out the impossibility of enclosing the thousands of Parisian filles de joie in licenses houses. The frontispiece, which has been attributed to Henri Monnier, shows a discussion among the women debating the pour et contre of the measures, presided over by the matron. It is captioned ‘Comité central et de Sabbat des Donzelles de Paris’, likening it to a ‘sabbath’ of witches. WorldCat lists copies at the Bn, Cleveland Public Library and Bryn Mawr College only.

First edition. A near pristine file copy of this French language example of an early rag book from Dean and Co, who pioneered the rag book for the youngest children in 1903, producing boldly coloured printed calico books designed to be washable and indestructible — the Dean logo shows two dogs pulling at a rag book, and the inserted advert leaf states that children can carry the book in their mouths without danger ( ‘Les couleurs employées dans ces livres sont fortement fixés. Les enfants peuvent les porter à la bouche sans aucun danger. Ces livres peuvent être lavé’). Qu’est cela? is a simple vocabulary book, naming fifty familiar objects including toys (dolls, a cup-and-ball, a paintbox, a toy train, a jack-in-the box, a kite and a rocking horse) as well as a rifle, a sword, a drum and an automobile. No library copies found in WorldCat or JISC LibraryHub.

Rag books proved a popular adaptation of the printed codex in the early twentieth century, bringing books to the youngest of children. This is a file copy from Dean and Co, who pioneered the rag book for the youngest children in 1903, producing boldly coloured printed calico books designed to be washable and indestructible — the Dean logo shows two dogs pulling at a rag book. It illustrates twenty-four animals, including the dog on the cover, as well as butterflies, a giraffe, a camel, a parrot, a kangaroo, three monkeys and a turkey, all captioned in French. The pinked edges were designed to minimise fraying, and in this case the copy is unused. No library copies found in WorldCat or JISC LibraryHub.