Alphonse Daudet / André Collot - Le Petit Chose [num. sur vélin] - 1935

André Collot / Alphonse Daudet. Le Petit Chose. Paris, Éditions de la Bonne Étoile, no date [1935]. in4 (26.5 × 20.5 cm); 368 pp. 1 frontispiece.

Very beautiful illustrated edition of Alphonse Daudet's first novel, adorned with 31 watercolors, ornate initials, vignettes and color tailpieces by André Collot.

Copy bound in a beautiful (Bradel) binding in half-leather with corners, spine with raised bands ornamented with the title and the author's name in gilded lettering. Gilt top. Covers and spine preserved.

Edition numbered 1/3000 copies on Navarre vellum, the only printing, this one no. 1100.

André Collot exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and at the Salon des Indépendants and has illustrated many
"luxury editions". (in Bénézit).

The first novel of a famous writer that barely hides an autobiography that is at once tender and violent. The story is that of a poor and fragile provincial youth whose journey is strewn with obstacles, from a difficult childhood to painful maturity. This sort of coming-of-age tale ahead of its time speaks especially to adolescents with a romantic soul and relies on a very strong identification of the reader with this Petit Chose, often so defenseless before the terrible school of life. The style, classical in form, makes this work one of the most representative novels of 19th-century literature and earned its author the nickname "the French Dickens".
(Isabel Soubelet). Bénézit III, Dictionnaire des peintres, p. 118.

Condition: Binding in very good condition. Minor defects (spine very slightly darkened). Interior fresh, paper a bit yellowed. Very good copy, untrimmed.

Subject: Daudet’s Le Petit Chose illustrated with 31 watercolors by André Collot