274 - BOURGES, Élémir. MALTESTE.

BOURGES, Élémir. MALTESTE. The Child Who Returns. Paris, Librairie de la Collection A. Romagnol, 1905. Large 8vo (27 x 19 cm), (2) folios, XL pages (including calligraphic text shown in the illustration) and 12 pages (typeset text). Contemporary midnight blue morocco, entirely decorated with mosaic violets; spine with four raised raised ribs bearing the author’s name and title in gold, double gold fillet on the edges, guilloché caps, endpapers lined with olive morocco and framed by three gold fillets and a gold border, endpapers lined with violet tabis, edges gilt on endpapers, cover preserved, in a half-bound slipcase with bands, marbled slipcase [Noulhac, 1910] (spine of the slipcase very slightly rubbed, interior in very fresh condition). Description: A very fine copy superbly bound by Noulhac. First edition, reproducing the author’s manuscript, followed by the same text in typeset form. Decorated with borders by Louis Malteste. The illustrations also include a black-and-white frontispiece portrait and a frontispiece title page engraved in color by Malteste. Limited edition of 350 copies in large or small format, numbered 1 through 350. This large-format copy, No. V, on vellum paper, was printed for Albert Bélinac, a French textile and silk manufacturer, in Saint-Étienne between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Enriched with two sets of early illustrations, one in black and white, the other in color. Includes the six insert plates, in black and white and in color.