Rare books from Triolet Rare Books, ABAA

Paris: Librairie Stock, 1923. First edition. Quarto. [272] pp. Original printed wrappers, glassine. Some minor handling wear, front and rear cover slightly shorter than text block, near fine. Of a total edition of 625 copies, this is one of 100 copies on Madagascar, with an original drawing by Cocteau bound in with annotated title ("avec dessin ou annotation de l'auteur sur page de garde"). The drawing is of a terrier with a bow on its collar, initialed and annotated by the artist, "Chien fait par Picasso dans un seul bout de carton." A beautiful, fairly early collection of Cocteau's drawings, printed on rectos only and presented without text in some thematic sections (including "Le mauvais lieu," which includes scenes of bars populated by cross-dressers, same-sex couples, and others), and many portraits, including Satie, Radiguet, Bakst, and Picasso, to whom the book is dedicated. Housed in a custom clamshell box. OCLC locates less than twenty copies in America across several records.

Paris: Éditions Totem/Librairie José Corti, 1932. First edition. 232 pp. Original publisher's printed wrappers. Minor handling wear, yapped edges a little rubbed. Very clean overall. A play by the great Chilean poet. Gilles de Rais was the notorious knight who fought alongside Joan of Arc but is better known as a serial killer; Bataille and Huysmans both wrote works about him. Frontispiece portrait of the author by Picasso, with two illustrations by Joseph Sima. Inscribed by Huidobro "a mes chers amis Lipchitz," possibly the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz and his wife Berthe, with whom Huidobro was known to associate during his time in Paris. A rare book, particularly inscribed.

[Paris]: Fernand Mourlot, 1949. First edition. Folio (17 x 12 ¾ inches). 60, [53] pp. Unbound gatherings laid into an open folding vellum portfolio, housed in publisher's clamshell case. Original color lithograph frontispiece, 26 en texte lithographs, and 12 offset color lithographs. One of 250 numbered copies on vélin d'Arches. Signed by the artist and author on the justification page. Some minor foxing throughout, some offsetting from prints. Cloth is separating slightly on the lower rear spine edge of the case, not affecting structure. Near fine."Achevé d'imprimer le 25 février 1950 a Paris sur les presses de J. Dumoulin, H. Barthélemy directeur, pour le compte de Fernand Mourlot et André Sauret. Les lithographies originales de Georges Braque et les reproductions ont été tirées sous la surveillance de l'artiste par Mourlot frères"--Colophon. "Le texte de Pierre Reverdy, Une aventure méthodique, est orné de vingt-six lithographies originales de Georges Braque qui a également exécuté… Read More

Paris: Aux Editions Jeanne Bucher, 1934. First edition. One of 800 numbered copies (of a total edition of 816 copies). Five volumes, in publisher's slipcase. Each volume is numbered 335, interestingly some are stamped and some are hand-numbered. The five volumes are as follows: Premier Cahier: Dimanche / Elément: La Boue. Exemple: Le Lion de Belfort. Deuxième Cahier: Lundi / Elément: L'Eau. Exemple: L'Eau. Troisième Cahier: Mardi / Elément: Le Feu. Exemple: La Cour du Dragon. Quatrième Cahier: Mercredi / Elément: Le Sang. Exemple: Oedipe. Dernier Cahier: Jeudi, Vendredi, Samedi / Eléments: Le Noir; La Vue; Inconnu. Exemples: Le Rire du Coq, L'Ile de Paques; L'Interieur de la Vue; La Cle des Chants. Slight sunning to spine of each volume, as often seen, hint of wear to spine tips. Overall an excellent set. One of Ernst's most important and extraordinary works, a narrative without text, in which he collaged the images from nineteenth century engravings. This was the third of his collaged… Read More

Paris: The Black Sun Press, 1931. First edition. Translated by Kay Boyle. [8], 38, [8] pp. Publisher's black cloth boards, decorated in elaborate gilt and blind, designed by Ernst in collaboration with A.J. Gonon. Nineteen photograms with tissue guards, with text printed in red. One of 200 copies on "finest bristol paper," of a total edition of 255 copies. Some minor wear to head and tail of spine, faint old tidemark to lower corner of leaves, near fine. Housed in a custom modern slipcase. A major surrealist collaboration. Crevel's text was the first chapter of his novel Babylone, translated by Kay Boyle at the request of Black Sun publisher Caresse Crosby. The nineteen photograms (or cliché-verres) illustrating the book were produced using a similar process to Man Ray's rayographs. Ernst's images were made by combining textural rubbings and line drawings on sheets of thin translucent paper, and then using those sheets as negatives to create a reverse image on photosensitive paper. These were then… Read More

Antwerp: J.F. Bogaerts & R.R. Dodson, 1923. First edition. Original pictorial wrappers, front and rear wrapper with a different color lithographed illustration. Some edgewear, rust stains from staples at spine edge. Colors bright and fresh. Twelve verses for children by Jan Peeters, with 12 full-page linoleum block color prints by Floris Jespers. A spectacular and early avant-garde children's book. Jespers' abstracted and representational color plates interplay geometric and decorative styles drawn from Cubism, Constructivism, Expressionism, De Stijl, and Art Deco. An outstanding example of post-World War I book illustration. OCLC locates five copies in the US.

Hartford: James Thrall Soby, 1934. First edition. Publisher's plastic comb binding, stiff wrappers. Minor vertical crease to front cover, light chipping to outer edge. Upper and lower portions of the front cover coming loose from the binding, but the cover is still held firmly. Internally clean and bright. Now housed in a custom clamshell box. The very rare first issue. As Roth describes, the publisher "attempted to generate demand where none existed by suggesting the edition had sold out. After replacing the title pages of these copies- presumably a healthy percentage of the run whose sales had in fact, been slow to none- with one stating 'deuxième edition,' second edition, he returned them for sale. Copies with the original title page are exceedingly rare." Man Ray's first monograph, with texts in English and French by Duchamp, Tzara, Eluard, Breton, and Man Ray himself. Frontispiece portrait of Man Ray by Picasso. Contains 104 heliogravure images. "Part art, part illustration, [the book] was… Read More

Paris: Galerie Simon, 1923. First edition. [16] pp. Original printed wrappers. One of 100 copies (of 112 printed), signed by Artaud and the illustrator Elie Lascaux. Hint of wear to head and tail of spine, mild offsetting to endpapers, near fine or better. Artaud's first book, a collection of surrealist poems. Published by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the great gallerist who also produced attractive limited editions of works by Gertrude Stein, Max Jacob, Tristan Tzara, and others, with illustrations by Leger, Picasso, Gris, Masson, and others. Though he is better known for his contributions to the theatre, these "shreds I have managed to snatch from complete nothingness," reminiscent of Poe, Rimbaud, and Baudelaire, are nonetheless marked by the uniqueness of Artaud's vision. As John Ashbery said of him, "he was a mystic endowed with an almost Jamesian sense of precision in analyzing his turbulent states of mind." The critic Maurice Saillet said of the poems in this collection, "they breathe a… Read More

Paris: Editions GLM, 1935. First edition. Unbound folded gatherings laid into publisher's photographically illustrated wrapper, as issued. Some creasing to the front cover at the spine, as often seen, slight rubbing to head and tail of spine. Interior clean and bright. Housed in a custom chemise and slipcase, with title printed on front cover of chemise and displayed through cut-outs on the slipcase. Binder's signature within the chemise, dated 1988.Of a total edition of 1225 copies, this is one of 200 roman-numeraled hors commerce copies. Signed on the half-title by both Eluard and Man Ray, and inscribed to Leon Pierre-Quint, the literary director and editor of the major surrealist publishing house Editions du Sagittaire, and friend and biographer to Proust and Gide. Although not an uncommon book, the hors commerce copies are less seen, and it is very rare to find it signed by both authors.Facile is one of the most beautiful and influential books of the twentieth century, the very definition of a… Read More

Paris: Pierre Seghers and Imprimerie Union, 1953. Folded concertina, made up of three sheets assembled and attached to the back with strips of cloth. Original hangers attached to verso. With the publisher's original rhodoïd case. A gorgeous, fine copy, bright and fresh. Now housed in a custom clamshell box. Eluard wrote the poem during the German occupation of France in 1942; it was originally published in the clandestine book of poetry Poésie et vérité 1942, and later printed in leaflet form and parachuted over occupied territories by the thousands by the British Royal Air Force. Liberté became a symbol of the Résistance under the oppression of Vichy and the German occupation. Eluard himself said of his stirring ode to freedom, "I thought of revealing at the end the name of the woman I loved and for whom this poem was intended. But I quickly realized that the only word I had in mind was the word Liberté. Thus, the woman I loved embodied a desire greater than her. I confounded it with my most… Read More

Paris: Maeght Éditeur, 1948. First edition. 51 leaves, 45 leaves of plates; 86 color etchings by Chastel (including 38 full page), tissue guards laid in, unbound as issued in etched pictorial wrapper, housed in publisher's chemise with inlaid title label to spine, with slipcase. Some slight wear to head of slipcase opening, contents about fine with some slight occasional offsetting. One of 148 copies on vélin de lana, of a total edition of 196 copies. Chastel made extensive studies at the Paris Zoo "until he felt capable of realizing the essential characteristic of each particular bird or animal as he saw it, that is, as much subjectively as objectively. He then interpreted these syntheses in decorative form. He envisaged the illustration in terms of a double-page-the unit in which the lettrine, likewise etched in color, would be linked with the facing design.... The colors are used emotively and for contrast.... Every double-page is exciting and original." Strachan goes on, "Chastel has so… Read More

[Firenze: Tip. Galileiana propr. Cappelli], n.d. [1912]. First edition. [1], 2-11, [12] pp. Original Florentine wallpaper sewn wrappers, printed label on front cover. Slight edgewear all around, otherwise an unusually bright and clean example of a fragile item normally found in much lesser condition. This copy with the publisher's imprint at foot of p. [12], Wilson notes that "most copies examined lack the imprint." Ownership signature of legendary bibliographer and bookman John Carter on the inside front cover. Now housed in a custom clamshell box.The art critic Henry McBride once perceptively observed that Gertrude Stein "collected geniuses rather than masterpieces," understanding that Stein's own genius lay in an almost unparalleled ability to spot other people's talent. The friendships which she formed with Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne and Hemingway in turn formed the raw material for her own art; "Pablo is doing abstract portraits in painting. I am trying to do abstract portraits in my medium,… Read More

Paris: [Les Presses du Montparnasse], 1923. First edition. [57] pp. Printed wrappers. Inevitable toning to leaves, else a fine copy of a fragile production. 180 copies were printed; this one of the 100 copies on vergé, unnumbered and unsigned. Frontispiece by Max Ernst, drypoint on chine, mounted, signed in the plate. This is generally considered to be the only drypoint Ernst executed in his career. Konnertz & Spies, Max Ernst, Books and Graphic Work, 5. Rainwater, Max Ernst, Beyond Surrealism, 16. Hugues & Poupard-Liessou, Max Ernst, Écrits & Oeuvre Gravé, 45. Spies & Leppien, Max Ernst, Das Graphische Werk, 9B. Rossier & Goerg, Max Ernst, Oeuvre Gravé, 4.

Lexington, KY: Gnomon Press, 1970. First edition. Brown cloth boards, paper spine label lettered in black, photograph mounted on front board. According to Jonathan Williams, from whose collection this copy came, one of fifteen copies bound in boards, signed by Meatyard on the half-title and by Wendell Berry at his introductory note. The first monograph on this major photographer, published only two years before his untimely death. See Birchfield, James D. (1992) "Gnomon Press and Jonathan Greene: Two Bibliographies," The Kentucky Review: Vol. 11: No. 2.

Paris: Éditions Cahiers d'Art, 1947. First edition. [48] pp. Plain wrappers with attached dust jacket. Some toning to cover extremities, minor handling wear, near fine. One of 500 numbered copies, although Eluard noted that only 258 copies were printed due to a lack of paper. Eluard's poignant tribute to his wife Nusch, published a few months after her sudden and unexpected death. Illustrated with eleven exquisite photographs of Nusch by Man Ray and Dora Maar. Nusch had also been the subject of Man Ray's camera in the similarly superlative Facile, published ten years earlier (see item 13). In 1965, Louis Aragon, during a tribute to his friend, mentioned his first encounter with the book: "He signed it with an invented name Didier Desroches, because he had killed Paul Eluard... What he had shown me of Didier was of a confounding beauty. This little book which was to appear as the work of an unknown, it is an understatement to say that in my eyes it surpasses all that Eluard signed with his name. I… Read More