?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
(BARBIER, GEORGE; and FRANÇOIS-LOUIS SCHMIED.) Schwob, Marcel. Vies Imaginaires. 60 illustrations by Barbier, including 15 hors texte and 42 in texte, wood-engraved by Pierre Bouchet; the book beautifully designed by Schmied. Small folio; contents loose as issued in original pictorial wrappers, very lightly toned; cloth-backed metallic paper-covered board chemise and matching slipcase, surface wear; internally bright and fine. Paris: Le Livre Contemporain, 1929
one of 120 copies created specially for members of the french bibliophile group, le livre contemporain, under the direction of E. de Crauzat and A. Bertaut. This copy is press-signed for L. Carteret.
Vies Imaginaires is a collection of 22 semi-biographical short stories about Petronius, Lucretius, Paolo Ucello, Pocahontas, and William Kidd among other historical figures, first published in the newspaper Le Journal between 1894-95. Incorporating myth and fantasy with historical facts, they are considered among the first of the genre of biographical fiction. Jorge Luis Borges was extremely fond of Schwob's writing and publicly acknowledged that Vies Imaginaires influenced his first book "A Universal History of Infamy" (1954). Georges Rivière, Catalogue 1967, No. 153; Ritchie 30; B. Martorelli, George Barbier, The Birth of Art Deco, page 139; Monod 10223; Carteret IV, 361.
