Paris, chez Nepveu (de l’imprimerie de Firmin Didot), 1822.
Oblong 8vo [240 x 160 mm] of: 1 engraved frontispiece decorated with a vignette, 154 pp., 24 water-colored pl. out of pagination. A few rare foxing. Preserved in its original blue wrappers. Right upper corner torn without loss. Contemporary wrappers.
Fifth edition, entirely reedited and considerably enlarged, rare like all the childhood books.
Gumuchan et Cie, Les Livres de l’enfance du XVe au XIXe siècle, 3766; National Union Catalog (NUC pre-1956), 280:273.
The previous editions are so rare that this one is generally considered as the original one. Besides, Gumuchian only quotes the present edition.
An exceptional copy of which the set of 25 aquatint copper-engravings by Xavier Leprince have been contemporary enhanced with watercolor. The engraving decorating the title leaf represents three young boys surrounded by the attributes of various games: racket, hoop, kite, etc.
Each engraving pictures some boys in bourgeois clothes giving themselves up to one or two different games: Roller skate, Sledges and Slides, Ball, The Dodge ball, The hopscotch and the Palm game, etc.
Ordinary copies present the plates in black. Gumuchian’s copy included only “3 plates in color and 22 printed in sepia”.
A copy preserved as published, untrimmed in its original wrappers, wide-margined, mostly uncut.
According to our researches among French public Institutions, only the B.n.F. and the Fonds Pollès at the Bibliothèque de Rennes would own this rare edition:
No complete copy preserved in its contemporary binding has been recorded on the international public market for over thirty years.
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