The Elixir of R.P. Gaucher, text by A. Daudet, photographic illustrations from nature.
Autograph dedication signed by the author, Henri Magron, “to the Société Photographique du Nord de la France, tribute from the author”.
Stamp on the first page of the Northern Photographic Society in Douai.
Around 1889 - 1890
Text by Alphonse Daudet printed by the lithographic company LANGUEHARD, Passage Bellivet in Caen.
Addition in the text of 21 photographic prints on laminated albumen paper, by Henri Magron.
Extremely rare.
Album : 25 x 33 cm
Henri Magron illustrated this work in 1889-1890 with photographs and published it independently. This achievement is the very first French attempt to illustrate a work of literature through photographs inserted into the text. It is a true incunable of “photoliterature”.
The photographs accompanying this text are interpretations of the literary work. Long before the surrealist productions or the photo novel of the mid-twentieth century, writers and photographers, publishers and printers took the initiative to inaugurate and promote the photographic illustration of literature.
This is an extremely rare book, a star of French production, the very first book of this type published, illustrated by Henri Magron, a hand-made edition of thirty copies, a legendary work if ever there was one.
The Elixir of the Reverend Father Gaucher is one of the short stories from Lettres de mon moulin by Alphonse Daudet initially published in Le Figaro on October 2, 1869, before being inserted the same year in the first collected edition by Hetzel of Lettres de mon mill.
The story tells of the adventures of Brother Gaucher, herdsman at the Premonstratensian convent, who has the idea of making and selling an elixir to save the monastery from ruin. Success established, the monks of the community then put up with the drunken excesses of the now Reverend Father Gaucher.
1 similar copy at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Total: 5000.00 €