Messaline. Roman de l'ancienne Rome.
This rare first edition of *Messaline* (Paris, La Revue Blanche, 1901) reveals Alfred Jarry working beyond the familiar Ubu constellation. In a handy duodecimo format, the Roman narrative unfolds with uneasy sensuality, biting irony, and satirical clarity. Issued by La Revue Blanche—one of the key fin-de-siècle platforms—the book sits naturally among Symbolist circles and early literary modernity. This copy is attractively bound in havana half-chagrin with striking orange percaline boards, while the original cover and spine have been preserved—an important bibliophilic virtue. Talvart & Place (X, 130) records the edition in Jarry’s bibliography. A compelling early printing that captures Jarry’s historical imagination and stylistic restlessness.
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Jarry, Alfred
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Messaline. Roman de l'ancienne Rome.
1901 | Paris | La Revue Blanche
A rare Jarry first edition: Roman desire with fin-de-siècle bite.
This rare first edition of *Messaline* (Paris, La Revue Blanche, 1901) reveals Alfred Jarry working beyond the familiar Ubu constellation. In a handy duodecimo format, the Roman narrative unfolds with uneasy sensuality, biting irony, and satirical clarity. Issued by La Revue Blanche—one of the key fin-de-siècle platforms—the book sits naturally among Symbolist circles and early literary modernity. This copy is attractively bound in havana half-chagrin with striking orange percaline boards, while the original cover and spine have been preserved—an important bibliophilic virtue. Talvart & Place (X, 130) records the edition in Jarry’s bibliography. A compelling early printing that captures Jarry’s historical imagination and stylistic restlessness.
€550
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In-12 (Duodecimo) approx. 17 × 22 cm
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Product DETAIL
Jarry reworks the notorious figure of Messalina, Emperor Claudius’s scandalous wife, into a novel where power, desire, and public performance collide. Ancient Rome becomes a mirror: beneath the historical décor, modern fixations and fin-de-siècle moral hypocrisy surface. The tone shifts between near-theatrical scenes, satirical bite, and dark erotic charge. Through ellipsis, quick pivots, and destabilizing details, Jarry repeatedly nudges the reader away from conventional realism. The imperial intrigue reads less like costume drama than a testing ground for human appetite and manipulation.
Pissarro, Lucien · Ricketts, Charles
De la typographie et de l’harmonie de la page imprimée. William Morris et son influence sur les arts et métiers
De la typographie et de l’harmonie de la page imprimée is a refined fin-de-siècle publication devoted to the art of the printed page. Lucien Pissarro and Charles Ricketts place William Morris at the centre as a reformer of the book, printing and the applied arts. The work belongs to the circles in which the Arts and Crafts movement, private press ideals and the renewed valuation of typography meet. The title makes clear that typography is not treated as a technical accessory, but as an harmony of type, margin, paper and page design. The edition appeared in 1898, in London from Ricketts and in Paris from Floury, standing between English private press culture and French bibliophile reception. This copy belongs to the issue of 250 copies on Arnold handmade laid paper within a total edition of 256 copies. The present errata slip and only slight corner wear make it bibliographically attractive and complete.
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La Noce massacrée belongs to Jean Cocteau’s early, sharply modernist phase, shortly after Parade and in close proximity to Raymond Radiguet. The book appeared in 1921 with À la Sirène, a publisher closely connected with the Parisian artistic avant-garde and literary modernism. The presence of a vignette after Picasso reinforces that context, although this is not an illustrated artist’s book in the strict sense. Cocteau writes from a milieu in which literature, theatre, ballet, visual art and social polemic constantly intersected. The printed dedication to Radiguet also makes the book a witness to a decisive friendship and intellectual alliance. This copy, n°XIX, belongs to the first 40 copies on vergé d’Arches, the most desirable form of the edition.
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Bataille, Georges
La littérature et le mal
La littérature et le mal is one of Georges Bataille’s most penetrating books on the moral and metaphysical stakes of literature. In these essays he examines how major writers approach the boundary between law and transgression, guilt and sovereignty, eroticism and destruction. The volume brings together Emily Brontë, Baudelaire, Michelet, Blake, Sade, Proust, Kafka and Genet in a radical reading of literature as an experience of the forbidden. For Bataille, the literary work is not a polite mirror of morality, but a place where human beings encounter their most dangerous freedom. This copy is remarkable for its paper issue: one of only 25 on vélin pur fil Lafuma-Navarre, the sole large-paper issue.
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Ponge, Francis
Le Parti pris des choses
These two copies of Le Parti pris des choses form a remarkable paired witness to Francis Ponge’s visit to Zurich in March 1949. The book itself is one of the decisive prose works of French modernity: not lyrical confession, but a precise encounter with the mute dignity of things. Ponge gives ordinary objects — soap, bread, an oyster, a pebble, a cigarette — a language at once exact, ironic and sensuous. The double inscription to Frank Thiessing and to Madame Frank Thiessing gives the pair a strongly personal resonance. Frank C. Thiessing belonged to the Swiss world of graphic design, publishing and visual modernism, notably in relation to Hans Erni. These copies therefore connect Ponge’s literary materialism with the artistic and typographic networks of post-war Zurich.
