Cours Supplémentaire pour les Élèves de 20 a 60 Ans: La Grammaire Française
Paris: Javal et Bourdeaux, 1927. 23.5x19cm: 117pp. First Edition. Limited Edition, this being No. 684 of 740 copies. Contemporary quarter bound maroon leather over marble paper-covered boards with original brown wrappers intact. Title, date, and small decorations, all in gilt, to spine. Red topstain. Marbled endpapers. Profusely illustrated with in-text watercolor pochoir. Light scratching and scuffing to boards. Bumped corners and edges lightly worn. Internally bright, clean, and tight. Originally housed in a slipcase with a set of black and white illustrations, not present here. A surprisingly naughty and entertaining illustrated French grammar book! Better Than Very Good. Scarce, with seemingly no copies for sale in the United States at the present time.
Joseph Hémard (1880-1961) was a prolific artist who designed costumes, theater sets, patterns for printed textiles, book bindings, posters, menus, letterheads, and even a façade for a bar in the 1925 Paris Exposition of Decorative Art. Like La Grammaire Française, some of his best known works are his humorous and naughty illustrated editions of usually boring non-fiction books. In this case, a grammar book that is indecent enough to warrant an early 20th century content rating similar to “X-rated”, being written for people ages 20 to 60. Yale Law School put on an exhibition in his honor in 2012 called, And then I drew for books’: The Comic Art of Joseph Hémard, mostly highlighting his books on French Tax Law, Civil Law, and Criminal Law.
Price: $350.00
Item #10277