[Rarebooks] fa: THEOPHILE GAUTIER - LA COMEDIE DE LA MORT - 1838 First Edition

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, February 21. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/znfbceo

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain

Theophile Gautier: La Comedie de la Mort. Paris: Desessart, 1838. FIRST EDITION; 8vo (24.5 cm), untrimmed, in later half straight-grained morocco by Champs-Stroobants; [4], 375, [5] pp.; with the half-title, frontispiece woodcut vignette signed "LB" (Louis Boulanger). Carteret I, p. 324; Vicaire III, 894.

Handsome first edition of Gautier's musings on death, a foundational work of French Romanticism and the inspiration for Hector Berlioz's song cycle Les nuits de l'ete (1841). Binding with modest bumping/wear to the corners, rubbing to the joints; text block with toning to the untrimmed edges, a few light spots to the half-title page, otherwise very clean and fresh, firmly bound. Front paste-down with the engraved armorial bookplate of Ross Ambler Curran, early twentieth-century West Coast society figure and bibliophile.