Bubu de Montparnasse

Paris: Edition du Sagittaire, chez Simon Kra, 1924. Very Good. 4to (245 x 190 mm). [iv], 124pp., [i]. Illustrated with 15 hand-colored watercolors “à la pochoir” by Chas Laborde. Limited edition printed on vélin paper numbered 343 (of 450). Original wrappers printed in black and red, with printer’s device to front, spine printed; (light occasional toning; spine chipped at tail). Front endpaper signed by David J. Modgrain Paris 1925 and later inscribed “to Martha Snodgrass/ Aug. 21 1933”. Once more inscribed on this page, in French, and dated “4 Novembre 1940.” Charles- Louis Philippe, French novelist, had brief liaison with a prostitute which inspired his best-known novel, Bubu de Montparnasse. It was widely regarded as the working-class novelist’s first success, a study of Parisian low-life in which the influence of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is predominant; it was first published in 1901. Chas Laborde was a well-known caricaturist working in the Montmartre region of Paris at the time of this work. Just two years after work on Bubu de Montparnasse, Laborde published an album of etchings entitled Rues et Visages de Paris, which with great verve and humor depicted a variety of typical scenes of everyday Parisian life. This publication later inspired a similar book for London and New York “street-life”. Laborde’s reputation was spreading further afield and in the spring of 1932 he went to New York at the invitation of Condé Nast publications. Carteret IV, p. 316.