Prévost | Histoire de Manon Lescaut, Paris, 1885, blue morocco gilt by Joly, presentation copy from the artist

l'Abbé Antoine François Prévost

Histoire de Manon Lescaut et du chevalier des Grieux... Préface de Guy de Maupassant, illustrations de Maurice Leloir (Manon Lescaut tirage a part des vignettes sur bois; Histoire de Manon Lescaut supplément, deux nouvelles aquarelles). Paris: Librairie Artistique, H. Launette, 1885 (1886)

3 parts in one volume, 4to (322 x 228mm.), copy number 160 from a limited edition of 165 copies, one of 50 on papier de chine with a triple suite of plates, ORIGINAL WATERCOLOUR BY LELOIR, half-title, frontispiece portrait (from the Glady edition), second frontispiece, 14 plates (each in 3 states, the 2 additional plates bound in the correct place in the text), decorative woodcut border to each text page, with an additional 10 plates by Léopold Flameng bound in, second section with 134 plates of the text woodcuts, blue crushed morocco gilt by Joly tooled to an eighteenth-century design, spine similarly gilt in compartments, gilt edges, silk brocade endleaves, slipcase, original pictorial wrappers bound in (for the main work and the supplement), slipcase slightly faded

The portrait and the additional plates by Flameng were made for the 1875 Paris edition of the text, printed by Glady (the original edition had 11 plates, not 10 as here).

PROVENANCE:

Presentation copy from the artist, with his card pasted to a flyleaf with a manuscript note to Madame Jeannin who lost her son in the war; Robert Beauvillain, bookplate