RABELAIS (François). OEuvres, contenant la vie de Gargantua - Lot 84

RABELAIS (François). OEuvres, contenant la vie de Gargantua et celle de Pantagruel, augmentées de plusieurs fragments et de deux chapitres du Ve livre restitués d'après un manuscrit de la Bibliothèque Impériale [...]. Illustrations by Gustave Doré. Paris, J. Bry aîné, 1854. Large in-8, garnet half-maroquin with corners, ribbed spine decorated with petit fers, entirely untrimmed, illustrated cover and spine preserved (Noulhac). First edition. Frontispiece, 14 hors-texte plates and a hundred woodcut vignettes after Gustave Doré in the text. One of Gustave Doré's earliest and best illustrations, a prelude in the same spirit to the Contes drôlatiques published the following year. A superb copy with its very fine, fragile white general illustrated cover printed in red, green and gold, "very rare in good condition" (Carteret, III, p. 511), preserved, complete with spine, as new. It contains the seven issue covers, each illustrated with a different vignette. It is enriched with 1 l.a.s., addressed to M. Simon, s.d., Friday (158). 1 p. gr.in-8. Lovely letter about his Rabelais, a copy of which he offered to his correspondent: "If anyone has ever spoken to you about it, you have certainly imagined something far superior It is something I did nearly four years ago, when I was just getting acquainted with wood, I did it very quickly and without fear, and I believe I can only attribute the success it has had to the naive inexperiences that abound in it". Provenance: - Bibliothèque Mercier (bookplate).