Edmond ROSTAND. Lot n° 79

Cyrano de Bergerac. A heroic comedy in five acts in verse performed in Paris, at the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre, on December 28, 1897. Paris, Eugène Fasquelle, 1898. In-12: red half-maroquin with corners, spine ribbed and decorated with cold filets, untrimmed, gilt head, cover and spine of green embossed paper kept (Pierre-Lucien Martin). First edition. One of 50 copies on Japan paper (no. 33). Dedicated to Coquelin aîné, who played the title role, the play was a triumph that earned Edmond Rostand his consecration as a poet. A unique copy, illustrated with several dozen original watercolours by Henriot. More than a hundred illustrations are completed, most in colour and six full-page, including a frontispiece. But 43 compositions are just sketched in graphite: the illustration stops on page 155, shortly after the beginning of act IV. Nothing indicates the reason for this sudden stop, but the graphite sketches offer the interest of showing the technique of Henriot, one of the most solicited illustrators of the time to constitute these illuminated books then in vogue: the sketches, very lively, are far from the meticulous finished watercolours. Nice copy.