André Lichtenberger / Victor Prouvé - Les Centaures. Avec vingt-deux compositions gravées sur bois ou sur cuivre. - 1924

Remarkable illustrated edition of Lichtenberger's novel, adorned with 22 engravings on wood and copper by Victor Prouvé (1852-1943).

Limited edition of 575 copies, this one on pure Rives vellum (specially made for this edition), numbered 102.

Bound in a well-made half-leather binding with cherry red corners, the spine with four raised bands decorated with the author's name and title in gilt letters, mottled head, covers and spine preserved.
In very good condition. Solid binding, minor rubbing on the nerves and headbands. Small tear on the first cover. Interior fresh and clean, tiny brown mark on the margin of the frontispiece, without foxing. Magnificent print of the engravings.

Brilliantly illustrated by Victor Prouvé in 1924, this odyssey of a forgotten age tells the adventures of the ancient race, the sublime and terrible one, which would soon become part of legend.

Les Centaures is a novel published by the French writer André Lichtenberger in 1904. Set in an alternative prehistory inspired by Greco-Roman mythology, it features hybrid peoples—centaurs, tritons, and fauns—confronted with the rise of the first humans. Initially associated with the genre of the prose poem upon its publication, and later classified by 1920s reprints as part of the fantastic genre, Les Centaures is now considered, in hindsight, as one of the earliest French novels belonging to the literary genre of fantasy.

André Lichtenberger / Victor Prouvé
The Centaurs. Novel. With twenty-two woodcut and copperplate engravings by Victor Prouvé. Paris, G. Crès & Cie, and Nancy, Victor Berger, 1924.
In-4 [244 x 192 mm] with 1 frontispiece, (2) leaves, 218 pages, (2) leaves, 5 plates hors texte.