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Le mystère laïc is one of the most significant early books on Giorgio de Chirico and his metaphysical imagination. Jean Cocteau writes here not as a detached art historian, but as a poetic witness to a painting that turns the everyday into enigmatic silence. The book appeared in 1928 from Éditions des Quatre Chemins and is illustrated with five compositions after drawings by De Chirico. It stands at an important intersection: De Chirico’s metaphysical painting, the Parisian avant-garde, Cocteau’s network and the later Surrealist fascination with dreamlike urban spaces meet here. This copy is numbered 413 of 2875 and is enriched with Cocteau’s autograph inscription on the half-title: “à mon cher Fouquet – Jean”. The recipient is probably Gaëtan Fouquet, a known figure from the broader modernist Parisian circle. Thus an already important artist’s book also becomes a personal association copy from Cocteau’s literary and artistic milieu.

Le Jeu de la Chouette is a pataphysical game-object by R. Gil, Régent de Catachimie, issued in 1976 as the second number of the Cymbalum Pataphysicum’s Otium series. The work is not a conventional book block, but a folder containing a folded illustrated game sheet: a readable object to be handled, viewed and interpreted at once. The title belongs to the ludic logic of the Cymbalum, where play, ritual, pseudo-science and bibliography constantly overlap. This record focuses on the purple copy bearing the manuscript indication “Le Christ d’Or”, one of the 52 deluxe copies on papier diurne under couverture crépusculaire, marked with the 52 figures of César-Antéchrist. That reference gives the Jarry connection particular force, since César-Antéchrist belongs to the early mythological and grotesque foundation of Jarry’s universe. The second copy present, the brown-orange variant, appears to belong to the 444 luxury copies on papier nocturne under couverture aurorale and forms a valuable comparison copy. Together, the two examples show how the pataphysical hierarchy of issue becomes part of the game itself.

Le Libertinage is an early and decisive prose collection by Louis Aragon, published by the NRF in 1924. The book belongs to the years in which Aragon moved from Dada and the circle around Littérature toward Surrealism. The title is provocative, yet its freedom motif means less a simple matter of morals than a freedom of mind, form and desire. Aragon explores the break with bourgeois logic through stories, fragments and prose pieces in which irony, tension and mental disruption meet. This copy belongs to the precious head issue on vergé Lafuma-Navarre, reserved for the bibliophiles of the NRF. It is number XLVIII and was printed for Dr. Sourdel. The combination of early Surrealist context, large-paper issue, named destination and original state makes this a strong bibliophile copy.

Le Meneur de lune is a post-war first edition by Joë Bousquet, published in Paris by Janin in 1946 and illustrated with drawings by Jean Camberoque. This copy belongs to the extremely restricted deluxe issue on vélin de Rives: one of only fifteen numbered copies for sale, in addition to five hors commerce copies. The addition of the very rare booklet Exposition Jean Camberoque, written by Bousquet and printed in Carcassonne by Bonnafous, greatly deepens the significance of the ensemble. It contains four pages of text and three plates reproducing paintings, showing Bousquet not only as a writer illustrated by Camberoque, but also as a critical mediator of the painter’s work. The small invitation card for the Jean Camberoque exhibition at the Librairie Clemenceau in Carcassonne, held from 6 to 21 January 1946, connects the book to a precise exhibition event. Together, book, booklet and card form an exceptional dossier around the Bousquet–Camberoque relationship in immediate post-war Carcassonne.

Raymond Radiguet's second and final novel, *Le bal du comte d'Orgel*, stands among the notable French psychological novels of the interwar period. Published posthumously by Bernard Grasset in 1924, it displays the remarkable control of a writer who died at only twenty. Against the fashionable Parisian world of the early 1920s, Radiguet dissects a love triangle in which desire, friendship and social convention continually collide. The classical clarity of his prose deliberately contrasts with the artistic ferment of the avant-garde circles around him. For the bibliophile, the first edition is especially desirable because of its carefully graded issue on luxury papers. This copy, number 122, is one of only 150 printed on Hollande and is bound in ivory vellum with the original wrappers and spine preserved.

This imposing edition of *Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée* pairs Guillaume Apollinaire’s canonical poetry with 33 original burin engravings by Tavy Notton. Published in 1962, more than half a century after the first appearance of Apollinaire’s bestiary, it is a distinctly postwar bibliophile reinterpretation of an early modernist text. Notton translates the brief emblematic poems into powerful black-and-white engravings, including nine double-page compositions. This copy is no. 119, one of 136 copies numbered 64–199 on vélin d’Arches. It belongs to the regular deluxe issue without an additional suite, while retaining all the original engravings created for the book. The edition represents the first printing of Notton’s illustrations, which were subsequently reused for a substantially larger edition. The interior grades Near Fine and the slipcase Very Good, giving an overall condition of Very Good+ to Near Fine. Its particular appeal lies in being a refined postwar bibliophilic reinterpretation of an avant-garde canonical text.

This inaugural issue of La Révolution surréaliste belongs to one of the most charged founding moments of the European avant-garde periodical. It appeared shortly after Breton’s first Manifesto of Surrealism and immediately gave the new movement a voice that was polemical, experimental, and collective. Far from a luxury book, it presents itself as a fragile yet explosive working document in which essays, dream accounts, inquiries, and visual interventions intersect. The contributors gathered here — Breton, Aragon, Éluard, Desnos, Péret, Reverdy, and others — define the early constellation of Surrealism in the act of formation. The presence of images and reproductions associated with Man Ray, Picasso, and Giorgio de Chirico likewise shows how literature and visual art were intertwined from the outset. For the bibliophile, this first issue is far more than a magazine: it is a source document in which programme, experiment, and group identity remain visibly in the making. This copy is in clearly below-average condition, yet for that very reason it feels deeply authentic in its survival. It remains a fragile, historically charged object from the first hours of Surrealism.

This bibliophile edition of *La relève du matin* combines an early text by Henry de Montherlant with ten original hors-texte lithographs by Robert Delaunay. It is the first edition of the work illustrated by Delaunay and therefore represents a remarkable encounter between an important French writer and a key figure of modern art. Delaunay, celebrated for his pioneering investigations of colour, rhythm and simultaneous contrasts, here translates his visual language into black-and-white lithography. The prints are not merely illustrative but provide an autonomous visual resonance for the book’s memories of youth, comradeship and war. This copy, number 257, is according to its limitation one of 440 copies on Vélin Lafuma within the numbered edition of 500. Its refined modern binding by Le Fil du Livre, with multicoloured paper boards and the original wrappers and spine preserved, forms an apt echo of Delaunay’s reputation as a colourist. It is an appealing artist’s book in which literature, original printmaking and individual bookbinding are brought together with distinction.

This ensemble unites two exceptionally closely related documents from the circle of Jean Dubuffet. *L'Art brut préféré aux arts culturels*, published by Galerie René Drouin in 1949, is one of the foundational programmatic publications of early Art Brut. The text sets out Dubuffet's rejection of culturally sanctioned art and champions creation produced outside academic and professional circuits. Pierre Bettencourt's *Le Bal des Ardents* represents the parallel world of independently printed experimental bookmaking. This copy belongs to the extremely limited group of 33 copies enriched by Dubuffet in 1964 with seven papillons, whose internal illustrations are heightened in watercolor. The conjunction of manifesto, experimental printing and manual artistic intervention gives the two works exceptional coherence. For a library devoted to Art Brut and the post-war avant-garde, the ensemble is a key object in which theory and book art meet directly.

*L’Antichambre de la nature* is an early and important book in the dialogue between Alain Jouffroy’s poetic writing and Wifredo Lam’s visionary visual language. It appeared in 1966 as the first volume of the *Paroles peintes* series, a collection that treated the meeting between poet and artist as an autonomous book form. Lam illustrated the work with nine original etchings, including an initial, giving the volume the intensity of a graphic ensemble rather than that of a merely illustrated text. Jouffroy’s title suggests a threshold space: not nature itself, but its antechamber, where forms, forces and metamorphoses prepare themselves. Lam’s hybrid universe, with its vegetal, animal and human resonances, answers this idea with exceptional precision. This copy is one of the 50 numbered examples on Rives B.F.K., signed by both author and artist. As the first volume of *Paroles peintes*, it also has a programmatic importance for a whole line of French artist’s books of the 1960s.