LORRAIN, Jean
Narkiss. Dessins de O.D.V. Guillonnet, gravés par X. Lesueur, préface de J. Doucet.
Paris, Édition du Monument, 1908. 20,5 x 17 cm. Cloth-backed marbled boards with title ticket. Marbled endpapers. (74) p. Printed in gold, green and black in 300 numbered copies. Original wrappers retained (upper cover loose). Illustrated with heliogravures in green, the frontispice heightened with gold. Full page printed on the text paper, vignettes on chine and pasted in. All pages with a gilt frame in Egyptian style. Text of the story in capitals only. First edition. Top of spine worn and broken, edges worn. Bookplate of Henri Schultz. Binding loosening at the beginning of the book. Unnumbered copy, one of 225 copies on vélin à la cuve des papeteries d'Arches. Motto: 'Conte pour mon ami Lalique'. And it's a work of luxurious book art worthy of René Lalique, a bit over the top. The publisher Jerôme Doucet explains in his preface that Lorrain had been pestering him for a long time to make a deluxe-only edition. Now Jean Lorrain is dead (June 20, 1906), his friends decide that as a monument for the author, this deluxe book should finally be produced. But it is a monument, too, for the core of homosexual love: the love of beauty, and for its eternal menace - death. The angular style of elegant art nouveau with its emerald green and splendorous gold expresses muscular majesty and deep dark tensions.
Antiquariaat Fokas Holthuis - Paulbooks
Professional sellerBook number: 268664
€ 495.00 [Appr.: US$ 537.42 | £UK 421.75 | JP¥ 84005]