Harropian Books

[Artist's Lithograph Book] Paul et Virginie

DE SAINT-PIERRE, Bernardin (with Original Lithographs by Huges de Jouvancourt)

Port-Louis - Ile Maurice: Éditions Esclapon, 1949. Huges de Jouvancourt. Jouvancourt Limited Edition. Hardcover. No. 24 from an edition 250 copies. The colophon and publishers ad insert both state that the lithograph stones were destroyed after printing. A series of unbound signatures in a cloth backed case with a paper spine label, folio size (16 inches tall), pp. [12], 132, [8], illustrated w. head and tailpieces, 13 full page lithographs (inc. the internal case front cover and frontis) - 11 being signed in pencil by Jouvancourt. Text in French. The prints and text are contained in an inner case (with an original lithograph on front cover) and all signatures remain untrimmed and unbound as issued. The outer case is worn and slightly bowed near bottom corner with soil, stains and some discoloration, hinges cracked, lacks original ties from fore-edge, label is chipped ; inner case is clean with a few small spots and a small crack to joint at foot of lower cover, text with an occasional spot of soil or closed tear to leaf extremities - not affecting prints. Outer Case : Fair / Inner Case, Text and Lithographs : Very Good to Near Fine. Item #4261

Huges de Jouvancourt has created a beautiful set of prints to illuminate this edition of a classic French love story. "Paul et Virginie (sometimes known in English as Paul and Virginia) is a novel by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, first published in 1788. The novel's title characters are friends since birth who fall in love. The story is set on the island of Mauritius under French rule, then named Île de France. Written on the eve of the French Revolution, the novel is recognized as Bernardin's finest work. It records the fate of a child of nature corrupted by the artificial sentimentality of the French upper classes in the late eighteenth century. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre lived on the island for a time and based part of the novel on a shipwreck he witnessed there." wiki.

Price: $1,300.00 CAD  other currencies