Signé; Maurice Barrès / Louis Dunki - Un Amateur d'âmes [avec envoi à Saint-Georges de Bouhélier] - 1899

Rare. First separate and illustrated edition of this text, originally published in 1893 and later included in 'Du Sang, de la volupté et de la mort.' Enriched with a beautiful inscription signed by Maurice Barrès: [to Saint-Georges de Bouhélier, amicably]

Adorned with beautiful illustrations in and out of the text by Louis Dunki (1856-1915), engraved by the Society of Wood Engravers 'L'image'.

Copy bound in an elegant binding signed 'Zipelius Brillouin' in half-lavender calf, with a gilt border along the covers, a rounded spine decorated with a gilt embossing of the author and title in gilt letters. Gilt head. Illustrated covers preserved (without the spine).

In very good condition. Beautiful copy, finely bound, minor rubbing at the headbands. Interior fresh and clean, endpapers and last leaf browned.

Stéphane-Georges Lepelletier de Bouhélier, known as Saint-Georges de Bouhélier, (1876-1947), was a French poet, novelist, and playwright. At the age of sixteen, he founded a literary magazine, L'Académie française, which became, after the second issue, L'Assomption. It was then that he founded naturism, a literary movement inspired by the desire to reconcile truth and beauty in art.
In November 1896, he had his first meeting with Zola, to whom he had dedicated his book The Winter in Meditation. Zola advised him to write an article on naturism and promised to recommend him to the directors of Le Figaro. The two men often met afterward, and Bouhélier supported the novelist's campaign for the revision of the Dreyfus trial.

Signed; Maurice Barrès / Louis Dunki
An amateur of souls
E. Fasquelle, publisher Paris 1899
In-8 (225 x 160 mm) of 88 pages