Metamorphoses du jour.
[Paris: Aubert, 1836].
Price: $1,500.00
About the item
Quarter-bound brown calf and silk jacquard, decoratively stamped in gilt on covers and spin. Shelf worn, with edge wear to margins and corners, some chipped. Foxing to interior pages.
Item #375399
Reimpression of the 1829 edition with the same 71 plates, framed here in double black lines, but missing the original preface, as well as the extra two Belgian plates issued in 1830 and afterward censored.
Scathingly funny and wildly inventive, each of the illustrations feature human figures with animal, avian, or pescatory faces in scenes ranging from looking through telescopes, shopping, and delivering babies to getting haircuts, sauntering the streets, dancing, and fishing, among other common everyday activities. Grandville's aim in creating the prints was to satirize the bourgeois middle class of Parisian society and thereby expose people for the beasts they really are.