Daniel De Foe - Robinson Crusoe - 1880

DE FOÉ (Daniel). Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, preceded by a notice on the life and works of the author, illustrated with a hundred engravings. Paris, Firmin-Didot, 1880. 1 volume in-8, publisher's binding in red percaline with a publisher's binding in gilt-and-black decorated cardboard, spine adorned, edges gilded.

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), pamphleteer, journalist and English novelist, published Robinson Crusoe in 1719; the work achieved prodigious initial success and would continue to be translated, adapted, and illustrated through the centuries. This French edition of 1880, produced by the prestigious Firmin-Didot house, belongs to the great tradition of illustrated books of the second half of the 19th century, a period during which wood-engraved illustrations in France reached a remarkable level of excellence.

The work includes a biographical and critical notice on the life and works of the author, followed by the full text of the novel. It is adorned with one hundred wood engravings interleaved in the text or printed on leaves, depicting the main scenes of the tale: the shipwreck, life on the desert island, the meeting with Friday, the battles with the mutineers, the arrival in Lisbon, and several scenes from the continental portion of the novel. The text itself is set in ornamental borders, featuring parrots, bamboos, ferns, lizards and snakes, evocative of the tropical atmosphere of the novel, with decorative drop capitals at the head of chapters.

The publisher's binding is in bright red percaline, with a design on the first cover portraying Robinson standing in a vegetal medallion, in gold on a red background, within a frame of geometric motifs and black acanthus. The second cover bears a circular arabesque medallion impressed in blind. The spine is adorned with floral motifs and gilt panels bearing the author's name and the title.

Overall condition is fair to good: light humidity exposure has caused some creases and blisters on the percaline, as well as a very pale halo near the margin of the first leaves whose margin is also slightly crumpled, other minor defects.