[Rarebooks] fa: {CURIOSA] GAMIANI ou DEUX NUITS D'EXCES - De Musset & Daragnes (1 of 110/Signed - Morocco Binding)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, October 9. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/jj6dza6

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[Alfred de Musset; Jean-Gabriel Daragnes, illus.:] Gamiani ou Deux Nuits d'exces par A. de M. Avec des vignettes de Jean de Guethary. [Paris:] Chez un Bourgeois de Paris, rue du Coq Hardi, 1845 [but 1920]. First edition thus, one of 110 copies printed, this copy signed with the inscription, "hors [de] commerce from M. Jean de Guethary"; 4to (26 cm), bound in full crimson morocco by G. Huser (signed on the elaborately gilt-tooled turn-in), silk and marbled endpapers, all page edges gilt; xx + 64 pp.; with 14 woodcut engravings and vignettes (one vignette duplicated); original wraps bound in.

A sapphic novel commonly attributed to Alfred de Musset, this dialogue between the Countess Gamiani and her frisky friends Fanny and Alcide was first published in 1833 and often reprinted, usually with appropriately louche illustrations. This edition includes the preface to the 1864 edition as well as the "extrait des memoires de la Comtesse de C..." Both the year of publication and the artist's name on the title-page are fictitious; the moody, erotic woodcuts are in fact the work of Jean-Gabriel Daragnes (1886-1950), a French painter, engraver and popular early 20th-century illustrator of books and curiosa.

An uncommon work in a striking ca. 1920s binding by Huser. Corners bumped, wear to the spine ends, joints cracking but secure, darkening/staining to the spine and joints; contents with scattered light foxing, occasional fingering to the page edges, else clean and sound, firmly bound.