louis-ferdinand céline - Oeuvres de Céline - 1969-1969

CÉLINE (Louis-Ferdinand). Works. Preface by Marcel Aymé. Foreword, notes and commentary by Jean A. Ducourneau. Illustrations by Claude Bogratchew. Paris, André Balland, 1966-1969.
5 quarto volumes (approximately 235 × 190 mm): XLIII-814 pp.; 759 pp.; 598 pp.; 493 pp.; 511 pp., and the tables of contents and printer's imprint leaves.

First collective edition of the works of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, published under the direction of Jean A. Ducourneau and carried out under the technical direction of Pierre Faucheux. Composition in Bodoni body 10, printed on handmade rag paper. Illustrated with 80 black-and-white plates hors texte by Claude Bogratchew, sixteen plates per volume.

Limited edition of 4,180 numbered copies: 180 copies on pure rag vellum and 4,000 copies on laid paper. Ours: one of the 4,000 on laid paper, bearing the number 1793.

Publisher's binding executed by Engel from the manuscript by Henri Mercher: smooth black morocco spine titled in white, gabled boards in transparent plexiglass allowing the printed composition of the first cover to show—a wide arc of gray and the author’s name, each letter treated in black hatchings. The same composition is repeated on the endpapers in a slightly offset arrangement, so that it overlaps by transparency and produces a moiré optical effect. Each volume is kept in its original black cardboard case.

Contents. Volume I: Voyage to the End of the Night — Theatre and Ballets (The Church; Ballads without music, without anyone, without anything) — Theses and medical writings (Semmelweis, Quinine in therapeutics, Medicine at Ford). Volume II: Death on the Installment Plan — Breakthrough — Guignol's Band I. Volume III: Guignol's Band II — The London Bridge — Mea culpa — Conversations with Professor Y — To the Swimmer of the Jar — Fairy Tale for Another Time I. Volume IV: Fairy Tale for Another Time II — Normance — From One Castle to Another. Volume V: Nord — Rigodon.