Gustave Doré/ Chateaubriand - Atala - 1863

[DORÉ (Gustave)] – CHATEAUBRIAND (François-René de). — Atala — Paris: Librairie de L. Hachette et Cie, 1863. — Folio, 418 x 304: (2 leaves), XI, 77 pages, (1 leaf), 30 plates.
Famous illustrated first edition, first printing, of 44 engravings by Gustave Doré, wood engravings, including 7 chapter-headers, 7 tailpieces, and 30 plates printed on tinted backgrounds with a captioned serpentine border.
Each print is 21 x 26.5 cm.
Original binding, spine rubbed and worn, corners dulled, but overall solid. Thick paper. Foxing from use. Pages sometimes creased.
First-issue copy from Hachette. The wood engravings are magnificent.
They were engraved by PANNEMAKER, HUREL, and HOTELIN, PISAN, HUYOT, POUGET, LAPLANTE, SARGENT, DUMONT, GAUCHARD, PIERDON, PIAUD, GUSMAN, TRICHON, HILDIBRAND, LALY.

Probably no text was more difficult to translate by pencil than that of Atala, whose pages are known to everyone as magnificently moving. Gustave Doré, with astonishing ease, shows himself alternately dark, radiant, graceful, and virile. One could not render, with more wild yet tranquil poetry, these vast solitudes, these impenetrable forests where light and shadows produce effects so strange. The desert, above all, is rendered with a power that would be difficult to match. Those who reproach Doré for a certain monotony perhaps do not recall the nature of the poem and the invariable setting of the scene" (Henri Leblanc).