New Orleans Characters by Frémaux, Léon - 1876

New Orleans: Peychaud & Garcia, 1876. Folio, original black sheep spine and corners over pebbled cloth. Gilt spine lettering and ornament biright; apine and edges worn with old repairs but sound. Old cloth tape to hinges and some gutter margins. Internall clean; coloring fresh and vivid. Lithograph title page with hand-colored oval portrait entitled "Tignon a la chinoise". Sixteen stunning plaltes, charmingly drawn and vibrantly hand-colored of contemporary New Orleans street characters, social life and tradespeople, men and women individually or in small groups. Captions in dialect and translation. Characters include cotton and sugar merchants, stockbroker ("selling imaginery stock at real prices"), an auction drummer, "merry roustabouts (two men dancing), vendors of apples, fritters, ice cream, coffee, oysters and Choctaw wares. Whitman Bennett: "... an unmistakeable French atmosphere". Reese, Nineteenth Century American Color Plate Books, 93: "... may be the best example of the genre printed in the United States.". Original Leather and Cloth. Very Good. Illus. by Léon Frémaux. Folio.