249 - RABELAIS, François, and ROBIDA, Albert. Works. Edition conforming to the latest texts revised by the author.

RABELAIS, François, and ROBIDA, Albert. Works. Edition conforming to the latest texts revised by the author. First printing of the 49 color plates and some 600 vignettes by Albert Robida for one of the greatest classics of the French language, in beautiful mosaic-patterned half-maroquin bindings. Paris, La Librairie Illustrée, n.d. [1885–1886]. 2 volumes, large quarto (310 x 240 mm), each bound in chocolate-colored coarse-grained half-maroquin with corner pieces, spine with 4 false raised bands highlighted and framed by black fillets extending onto the covers, mosaic designs of brown, brown, and red in the panels (two faces at the top and bottom and a cluster of grapes with leaves in the central panel), speckled headband. 494 and 484 pages, numerous illustrations including 49 plates (8 in color, 35 in monochrome, and 6 in black) and approximately 600 black-and-white illustrations in the text; titles printed in black and red. Slight wear on the bindings, some foxing mainly in the margins, slightly fragile seams in the first volume (two loose leaves, pages 153 and 4), tears on pages 367, 368, and 379 of the second volume. A beautiful edition of Rabelais’s humanist masterpiece, illustrated in the first printing with 49 inset plates and numerous illustrations in the text by Albert Robida (1848–1926), whose “vivid pencil drawings perfectly capture all the quirkiness of Rabelais’s style,” according to Octave Uzanne. Following in the footsteps of Gustave Doré, illustrating Rabelais’s *Œuvres* in 1885 presented a true challenge, which Robida masterfully met through original and vivid imagery, drawing on the imagination of the Renaissance and employing the technique of photogravure, a means of reproduction that was entirely new at the time. This edition concludes with an introduction and a glossary by Pierre Jannet. A fine copy.