1926 Limited Curiosa bound by Bayntun - Balzac TEN DROLL TALES. 1stED illustrated by Jean de Bosschère.
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(Description)
Author: Honore de Balzac. Jean de Bosschere (illustrator). Andre Maurois (introduction).
Title: Ten Droll Tales Being the Story of the Fair Imperia, The Venial Sin, The Merrie Diversions of His Most Christian Majesty King Louis the Eleventh, Together with Certain Other Quaint and Piquant Histories Making up the First Decade of the Droll Tales of Master Honore de Balzac, rendered Faithfully into English by J. Lewis May, with an Introduction by Andre Maurois and Illustrations by Jean de Bosschere.
Publisher: London: John Lane The Bodley Head Limited, 1926. first English de Bosschere illustrated edition limited to 3000 copies. This one is the #976/3000.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 9 " X 6 ".
Pages: xx-218 pages.
Binding: Attractive and near fine, full red morocco leather binding with significant gilt tooling to spine by Bayntun bindery (signed on the top of the first blank) (hinges fine, light rare scuffs - as shown) under a removable protective mylar cover. All edges gilt. An exquisite binding!
Content: Very good, near fine content (bright, tight, and clean - as shown).
Illustrations: Complete with the frontispiece and the 23 curiosa/erotic full-page illustrations by the famous Belgian painter Jean de Bosschere.
The book: Attractive and wonderfully bound first edition of these Balzac's tales illustrated by Jean de Bosschere. Bosschere was renowned for his lavish and erotic color plates, with their stunning use of saturated plates. His style complements the themes of the droll tales, or the 'contes drolatiques'. Les Cent Contes drolatiques is a collection of tales published by Honoré de Balzac in Paris from 1832 to 1837. They constitute a reminiscence of Boccaccio's Décaméron, claimed by the author himself, with which several academics made the connection.
The author: Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie Humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.
The illustrator: Jean de Bosschère (Uccle, 5 July 1878 – Châteauroux, 17 January 1953) was a Belgian writer and painter.
The binder: George Bayntun was born in 1873 in Bath, England. After an apprenticeship, he began his own bookbinding business in Bath in 1894, binding books by hand with great craftsmanship. Although many binders were using machines in their process, Bayntun refused to use modern techniques.