All Products

With *Le Testament d’Orphée*, Jean Cocteau published in 1961 the literary and visual counterpart to the film he conceived as his cinematic testament. The poet places himself at the centre of a dreamlike world where memories, mythological figures and characters from his own oeuvre encounter one another. The book reflects the exceptional unity of literature, visual art and cinema that defines Cocteau’s work. Lucien Clergue’s photographs reinforce its character as a tangible extension of the film. This first edition on ordinary paper is distinguished by a warm presentation inscription from Cocteau to ‘l’ami Malle’. The cinematic context and close overlap of professional circles make Louis Malle the very probable recipient. The copy thus creates a compelling association between two highly individual voices in French cinema at the beginning of the 1960s.

This first edition of L’Étoile au front is one of Raymond Roussel’s most characteristic theatrical books. Published after its turbulent première at the Théâtre du Vaudeville, the prose drama in three acts baffled and divided its audience. Rather than following a conventional plot, the play unfolds through explanations, embedded tales and the histories of curious objects, displaying the methodical marvels that made Roussel a cult figure. This copy is one of the rare luxury copies printed on Japon paper, the sole deluxe issue of the edition. Especially significant is the 16-page booklet La Critique et Raymond Roussel, bound at the beginning and gathering names such as Cocteau, Gide, Proust, Soupault, Éluard, Breton, Desnos, Aragon, Leiris and Tzara. The book is therefore both a dramatic text and a compact dossier on Roussel’s early reception. Uncut and with wide margins, it retains the quiet authority of an untouched bibliophile copy.

Les Trois solitaires appeared two years after Robert Desnos’s death and belongs to the moving post-war publications that gathered his voice anew. The volume contains new posthumous works and unpublished poems, making it not only a literary publication but also an act of remembrance. Yvette Alde’s lithographs provide an intimate visual counterpoint, not merely illustrative but responsive to the dream, solitude, and lyrical tension of Desnos’s poetry. The carefully produced loose-sheet quarto format, with chemise and slipcase, places the book firmly within the French tradition of the artist’s book. At the same time, the 1947 publication date gives it the historical gravity of a literary world still measuring the losses of war and deportation. For the collector, it is a refined conjunction of posthumous poetry, original lithography, and understated bibliophily.

*Les Yeux fertiles* is one of the notable publications from Paul Éluard’s Surrealist period in the mid-1930s. The collection appeared in 1936 under the imprint of Guy Lévis Mano, the poet, typographer and publisher who played a significant role in French modernist book culture. It combines Éluard’s poetry with a portrait and four illustrations by Pablo Picasso, bringing text and image together in a distinctly avant-garde book. Éluard was by then a central literary voice of Surrealism, while Picasso, though historically rooted in Cubism, maintained close ties with the Surrealist circle. Their collaboration reflects the intense exchange between poets, painters and independent publishers in 1930s Paris. G.L.M.’s restrained typography reinforces the modern character of the volume without competing with either poetry or image. This copy, number 164 on tinted alfa paper, belongs to the regular commercial issue and remains largely unopened. As a conjunction of Éluard, Picasso and G.L.M., it is a compelling document of French Surrealist bookmaking.

With *Le Solitaire* in 1973, Eugène Ionesco turned to the novel, producing the only full-length work in that genre within his oeuvre. The writer internationally celebrated for his Theatre of the Absurd here transfers his familiar concerns with solitude, death and the futility of human activity into a deeply introspective prose form. An unexpected inheritance frees the unnamed protagonist from his office routine, yet financial independence proves very different from genuine freedom. His withdrawal from society instead intensifies anxiety, alienation and his sense of the fundamental mystery of existence. The first edition published by Mercure de France is particularly desirable bibliographically because of its extremely small deluxe issue on Hollande Van Gelder laid paper. This copy is number 13 of only fifteen numbered copies on this first paper and remains unopened. It therefore combines an important text from Ionesco’s late career with one of the rarest and best-preserved forms of its original edition.

Les Poquettes volantes is a rare complete run of the small, mobile Daily-Bul publications from La Louvière. Between 1965 and 1979, 62 numbered issues appeared in a modest and handy small in-12 format. The series is an exceptional network document of Belgian and international post-Surrealist imagination, with contributions by the Piqueray brothers, Chavée, Scutenaire, Mariën, Alechinsky, Filliou, Topor, Joyce Mansour, Calonne and Pol Bury, among others. Its tone is light, sharp, absurd, poetic and often deliberately anti-explanatory. This copy is remarkable because several numbers bear autograph inscriptions to Jeanne and André Stas, to André Stas alone, and to François Jacqmin. The six prospectuses and the extra copy of no. 23 strengthen the ensemble as a small archive of circulation, friendship and literary complicity. As a complete run with such provenance, it is a core piece for The Hidden Page: a flying library of Daily-Bul, Surrealism, pataphysical humour and Belgian avant-garde.

Les Hommes abandonnés is a powerful bibliophile edition in which Georges Duhamel’s humanist prose meets the rough graphic language of Maurice de Vlaminck. The book appeared in Paris in 1927 from Seheur, in a limited edition of 345 numbered copies. The combination of a copper-engraved frontispiece and 24 black lithographs gives the edition striking graphic weight. Vlaminck’s images do not accompany the text decoratively; they intensify its hard and troubled humanity. The title suggests abandonment, social fracture and moral vulnerability, themes that resonate strongly in the interwar period. This copy belongs to the series of 300 copies on vélin d’Arches. It is therefore the principal issue of a carefully produced artist’s book in which literature and expressionistic intensity meet.

This posthumous collection of 1855 occupies a distinctive place in Gérard de Nerval’s work. At its heart is *Aurélia*, one of his last and most personal texts, in which dream, memory and lived reality continually merge. Although *Aurélia* had already appeared in the *Revue de Paris* in January and February 1855, Victor Lecou’s volume represents its crucial first publication in book form. The bibliographically precise designation is therefore edition in part original. No special large-paper issue or separate deluxe printing appears to have been produced, so the bibliophile hierarchy of copies depends chiefly on condition, preservation of the wrappers, provenance and binding. This copy is distinguished by its preserved original yellow wrapper and the elegant black half-morocco binding signed E. & A. Maylander.

Les Antliaclastes brings Alfred Jarry’s pataphysical imagination back into circulation in a late twentieth-century, image-rich form. The 1981 edition issued in Oleyres by the Centre de Recherches Périphériscopiques is not a mere reprint, but a reactivation of Jarry’s verbal and mental universe within a post-Collège context. Henry Meyer “sets the text in images” and gives antliaclastic absurdity a parallel graphic voice. The large cahier format heightens the sense of a playful research dossier, somewhere between artist’s book, pataphysical working document and ceremonial printed object. The stamp or mark of the Pompe à Phynances links the copy to the internal mythology of money, machines and institutions surrounding Jarry’s legacy. This copy is numbered 085 and belongs to the 333 deluxe copies. It is therefore a highly representative object for a collection devoted to Jarry, pataphysical print culture and the late graphic continuation of the avant-garde.

This first edition of Le meilleur choix de poèmes est celui que l’on fait pour soi. 1818–1918 is not an ordinary anthology, but a personal poetic panorama assembled by Paul Éluard. Its title already states the programme: the best selection is not imposed by a canon, but arises from an intimate act of reading. Éluard gathers and introduces poems spanning a century of French poetry, from Romanticism to the threshold of the modern avant-garde. The book was published in 1947 by Éditions du Sagittaire, with a colour cover designed by Paul Bonet and lithographically printed by Mourlot. It therefore has a marked visual presence as well as literary importance. This copy, number 35 of the deluxe issue, belongs to the numbered tête copies signed by Éluard.