L’Amour et la Folie: Poemes Satiriques d’Alexis Piron (1689-1773)

Paris [Vienna]: No Publisher, 1910.
First Thus.

32cm x 24cm. [4], 129 leaves, 20 plates each accompanied by a title leaf. Full blue leather signed Wallis, gilt lettering and extensive gilt tooling to spine, gilt borders and dentelles, top edge gilt, illustrated endpapers, cloth and marbled papered chemise, cloth and leather slipcase with gilt lettering. Text is in French.

First French-language edition of ‘Fleurettens Purpurschnecke’ (Vienna, 1905), the collection of eighteenth-century erotic verse illustrated by Franz von Bayros. Here the title page gives the verse as the work of Alexis Piron and credits the drawings to Venu de Bonestoc, a Bayros pseudonym. Privately printed under a false Paris imprint and not for public sale, with decorative borders to every page of text. One of 500 numbered copies on paper made for the edition, from a total of 530 (the first 30 on Japan paper). This copy rebound in a fine binding signed Wallis, with Bayros’ double-page illustration bound as the endpapers and a duplicate of text leaf 5 bound in. MONOD 1196.

Book is in Fine Condition. Minor wear and foxing to chemise. Some rubbing and peeling to edges of slipcase. Fine Condition.

AU$1,000