DENIS (Maurice) & GIDE (André). Le Voyage d'Urien. Paris, Librairie de l'art indépendant, 1893. In-8 brown box, decorated on the boards and the spine with a geometrical decoration inspired by Pierre Legrain, composed of mosaics in black box, squares and cold nets, and large horizontal gilded nets of different sizes with on the first board the title pushed to cold (whose initials V and U are mosaicked in lemon box); ornate interior frame, lining and black suede endpapers, gilt tr. on brochure, illustrated cover preserved, in a case (Mercher). First edition, the first work illustrated by Maurice Denis, decorated with a wood on the cover and 30 original lithographs in monochrome, 2 of which are full-page. Edition at 301 copies on laid paper (n°156). "Masterpiece of Art Nouveau" (The Artist and the Book, n°76), whose illustration was composed as the text was being written. After having seen the as yet unpublished drawings that Maurice Denis had done for Sagesse, Gide asked him to illustrate Urien's Voyage; the importance attached by the author to the painter's collaboration being underlined by the indication, on the title page, of their names in letters of equal importance. The arrangement of the images in the text is most harmonious: the symbolist lithographs of Maurice Denis, practically the only ones in his illustrative work, are pink and bistre for the Voyage sur l'Océan pathétique, light brown and sepia for the Voyage sur la Mer des Sargasses, and green and black for the Voyage vers une mer glaciale. This work holds an important place in the history of the illustrated book by being the first book in which color lithographs appear. Some rubbing to the spines otherwise a superb copy, very elegantly bound by Henri Mercher in 1963, of this very rare and sought-after edition.