Balzac/Robida - Les contes drolatiques - 1903

Balzac, Honoré de; Robida. The Droll Tales.

Complete work in two volumes, illustrated with 600 drawings by Albert Robida.

Paris, Illustrated Library / Tallandier publisher. Octavo. SD (1903). 396 and 378 pages. Havana brown half-leather with corners, with a spine adorned by five raised bands with blind-tooled fleurons in the panels, numbering, gilt ruling at the head and tail. Uniform bindings.

First printing of Robida's illustrations, well complete in two volumes and recognizable by its title page, which differs from the second printing dating from the 1920s–1930s in three volumes, also from Tallandier. Overall in good condition, apart from a few scuffs mainly on the leather bindings (corners) and the spine a bit worn; see photos. Interior free of foxing.

This work was one of the least successful among all those written by Balzac, but it provoked a great scandal at the time, as much for its bawdiness as for the whimsies of a language invented. Indeed, Balzac’s multilingualism, inspired by Rabelais and aimed at reproducing in a single voice that of a Middle Ages spanning three centuries and thirteen reigns, consists of neologisms, coined words, learned technical terms with their many Latinisms, but also dialectal and burlesque elements—not to mention the puns—, all served by a spelling and archaising constructions that give the tales a tone and style deemed by the author to fit his project, namely a “concentric book” within a “concentric work.”

This work inspired numerous illustrators, among them Gustave Doré, Dubout, and Robida—the copy we are offering today is in the first printing.