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Artist's Lithograph Book Paul et Virginie
1949réf. 4261Port-Louis - Ile Maurice: Éditions Esclapon 1949. Jouvancourt Limited Edition. Hardcover. Outer Case : Fair / Inner Case Text and Lithographs : Very Good to Near Fine. Huges de Jouvancourt. 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. 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. Éditions Esclapon hardcover
