"THIS IS DORE'S EARLY MASTERPIECE": BALZAC'S DROLL STORIES, WITH 425 ILLUSTRATIONS BY GUSTAVE DORE

(DORE, Gustave, illustrator) BALZAC, Honore de. Droll Stories Collected from the Abbeys of Touraine. London: John Camden Hotten, [1874]. Octavo, recent full red morocco gilt, raised bands, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt. $1250.

First English edition of Gustave Doré's early masterpiece of illustration, Balzac's Droll Stories, with 425 delightful full-page and in-text wood-engravings.

"Balzac's Contes Drolatiques, one of his masterworks… staked his claim to be considered the leading book artist of his time… This is Doré's early masterpiece; indeed, Beraldi thought it the most likely to endure of all his books. It is the culmination of the rollicking strain in his work, so much in evidence in his albums of lithographs… Among his backdrops are the old buildings of Strasbourg and the forests and mountains of Alsace, heightened by fantastic exaggeration… Before them are played out stories of passion and farce, of violence and deception… Doré's many portraits are usually of monks, soldiers, townspeople, and other persons lower in the social scale… These considered designs are accompanied by hundreds of light sketches, commenting on details of the action" (Ray, 327, 331-32). "Balzac proved to be Doré's most popular small book by far… Many people are surprised when they see it, expecting all Doré's famous books to be folios… Doré's Rabelais and Balzac illustrations both have a great deal of grotesque horror and black comedy in them, and the French loved it. Decades later, after Doré was so famous in England, he encountered severe hostility to those early drawings from John Ruskin and others. Today there are still many art critics who like Doré's early art style better than his folios" (Malan, 37). First published in France in 1855 (also in octavo). Malan, 237. Ray, Art of the French Illustrated Book 244.

Interior clean and fine. Beautifully bound.