Octave Mirbeau / Edgar Chahine - ‎Dans l'antichambre (Histoire d'une minute)‎ [sur vélin 1/200 num. ; reliure de Durvand] - 1905

Original illustrated edition with a frontispiece portrait and 11 etchings in the text in black by Edgar Chahine.

Numbered edition of 350 copies. This one is among the 200 in small in-8° soleil format, printed on strong vellum, with a single state of the engravings. It bears the number 285.

Binding signed by Durvand, half-light brown morocco, smooth spine decorated with a mosaicked and gilded composition surmounted by the title and author's name in small stamps. Gilded head. First cover preserved.

Condition: binding in very good condition. Interior impeccable. Very fine copy, untrimmed.

In 1904, the publisher Romagnol decided to capitalize on the emergence of the very young Académie Goncourt, which had just awarded its first prize to Force ennemie by John-Antoine Nau, by publishing ten luxury booklets dedicated to each member of this new assembly, which, in the spirit of its founder, was meant to thumb its nose at "the old hag" of Quai Conti. Like his nine colleagues, asked to provide a new piece adapted to the collection's format and intended to be illustrated by the Armenian-born painter and engraver Edgar Chahine, Octave Mirbeau proposed, for a modest fee of three hundred francs, to patch up and extend a short story published on March 16, 1888, in the literary supplement of Le Figaro, under the title "Histoire d'une minute," and reprinted eighteen months later under a new title, "Dans l'antichambre," in L'Écho de Paris on November 26, 1889.

The work describes a woman waiting in the antechamber of a man named Derbois for an urgent matter. The author is also waiting for Derbois because he needs to borrow money, as he is ruined and facing financial difficulties.

Octave Mirbeau / Edgar Chahine
In the antechamber (Story of a minute)
Paris, A. Romagnol, 1905
In-8 (21.5 x 14 cm), 30 pages. 1 figure.