SAND, George.

£20,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

La Petite Fadette. First edition, fine paper issue, of the author's major novel, one of her best known today. Together with La Mare au diable (1846) and François le Champi (1848), La Petite Fadette is one of Sand's pastoral "rustic novels", which drew inspiration from the author's love of the countryside and sympathy for the rural poor. In these works, "the familiar theme of Sand's work - love transcending the obstacles of convention and class - regained pride of place" (Ency. Brit.).The fine bindings were executed by the Parisian master bookbinder Émile Mercier (1855-1910), the apprentice and successor to Francisque Cuzin (1836-1890). Mercier worked for Cuzin for eight years, during which they established the elegant "Cuzin style", characterized by fine gilding and finishing. Following his mentor's death, Mercier took over his workshop and sustained the firm's reputation for two decades, signing bindings "Mercier S[uccesseu]r de Cuzin". Mercier's bindings are "noted for the excellence of their tooling", and the binder himself was celebrated in Paris as "l'artiste impeccable" (Coutts & Stephen, p. 182).Provenance: Paul Villeboeuf (b. c. 1856), with his bookplate. Villeboeuf was a distinguished collector of Romantic literature and fine bindings, mostly by Cuzin and Mercier. He was the father of the artist André Villeboeuf.

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