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Paul GAVARNI & BERTALL

Le diable à Paris

J. Hetzel, Paris 1845 & 1846, 18,5x27cm, 2 volumes reliés + 1 volume d'atlas.

Le Diable à Paris [Devil in Paris]
J. Hetzel | Paris 1845 & 1846 | 18.5 x 27 cm
| contemporary romantic shagreen
First edition and first printing of the 207 plates by Gavarni and 4 plates by Bertall. Many vignette illustrations.
Contemporary Romantic binding of half red shagreen over red paper boards, spines with gilt Romantic arabesques, gilt name of a previous owner to foot, marbled paper endpapers and pastedowns.
Contributions from George Sand, Charles Nodier, Honoré de Balzac, Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, Alfred de Musset, Léon Gozlan and others.
This copy without any trace of foxing. A few pale and tiny dampstains to margins of some leaves.
Complete with the extremely rare and famous «Plan de Paris fortifié, 1845, publié dans Le Diable à Paris, dressé par J. Andriveau-Goujon, J. Hetzel» (map of fortified Paris), which was distributed separately and which is missing from most copies.
The atlas bound in half red shagreen over marbled paper boards, spine with gilt typographic motifs, marbled endpapers and pastedowns.
Jules Hetzel, to compete with his rival Curmer's Les Français peints par eux-mêmes (1840-1842) called upon the same contributors as the Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux (1840-1842) that had brought him such signal publishing success.
This artistic and literary pantheon glorifying the capital concentrated on sketches. The conceit is of a minor demon called Flammèche, Satan's private secretary. The Devil entrusts him with a mission: he has to write a weekly report to keep him updated on the life of the capital. The indolent secretary, however, relies on the talents of the writers and illustrators of the day to chronicle Parisian life in his place.
At first appearance simplistic, this great mosaic of portraits should be considered in the context of the social statistics in Paris in the 1840s. At the end of the work, there is a 17 page chapter edited by Alfred Legoyt – a statistician and Director of the Bureau d'Administration Générale – devoted to this question. Far from being superficial, his study enlightens the reader on the various lives of Parisians at the dawn of the industrial age. Hetzel's overall tends to denounce the immense poverty of the capital, as witnessed by the literary texts, but also the touching realism of the illustrations. Gavarni, as usual producing humorous caricatures, here shows himself deeply pessimistic, illustrating the mortal nature of the condition of the city's inhabitants and testing the dominant deterministic social theory of the age.
«Look at this world of layabouts marching about in gold, silk, furs, and embroidered clothes; while just beside them, the bundles of living rags dragging themselves along, called ‘the dregs' of the people!...The greater part of the population condemned to excessive labour, abasement, and suffering so that certain privileged castes can have a smooth, gracious, poetic existence full of whims fulfilled!» (George Sand, «Coup d'œil général sur Paris», Le Diable à Paris).
A very good copy superbly bound of one of the most famous illustrated books of the Romantic period, complete with the exceedingly rare map of fortified Paris.

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