ORIGINAL EDITION Jules JANIN - The dead donkey... Lot 149

[ORIGINAL EDITION] Jules JANIN - The dead donkey and the guillotined woman Baudouin, Paris, 1829. Genuine, very rare first edition of Jules Janin's first novel. Finely executed half-maroquin bradel binding, author, title and date in gilt lettering on the spine. This copy contains the cover of volume 1 of Delangle's 1830 second edition, also bound at the head, as well as a vignette mounted on chine, both by Johannot. Another engraving by Johannot mounted on China from the second edition has been bound in the second volume. An important novel of the Romantic period, the author, somewhat disconcerted by the taste of the time for morbid tales, undertakes a grating parody of Victor Hugo's Last Day of a Condemned Man. Yet this work, born of a "teasing" intention, is certainly Janin's masterpiece, a teeming mix of the best elements of the macabre: scaffolds, brothels, prisons, a deformed jailer, a cemetery, strange scientific experiments and so on. In-12, 36pp, 158pp (1), 170 (1) Provenance: P. Tissot library with stamp.