![[FINE BINDING] BAUDELAIRE, CHARLES. Les Paradis Artificiels. Opium et Haschisch.](/sites/default/files/styles/auction_slider/public/images/lots/387/1484387.jpg?itok=74jrIM-u)
Lot Details
Lot 252
[FINE BINDING] BAUDELAIRE, CHARLES. Les Paradis Artificiels. Opium et Haschisch.
Paris: Poulet-Malassis et De Broise, 1860. First edition. Finely bound in full crushed red morocco, the covers inlaid with a design of intersecting green, blue and black morocco forms, the upper cover with "CB" in gilt and the lower cover with "1860", the spine titled in gilt with Art Deco lettering, marbled endpapers, the top edge trimmed, others uncut, the binding with an unidentified signature on the rear turn-in being an "M" followed by a downward wavy line. 7 1/2 x 5 inches (19 x 12 cm); half-title, title printed in red and black, iv, 304, [1], [12] pp. ads dated 1 May 1860, without the frontispiece. The binding fine but with a nick or two to extremities, the half-title dust soiled and with a chip at head, page extremities lightly toned, the lower corner of two text leaves torn away.
A finely bound copy of a rare first edition of Baudelaire (1500 copies) and an important early work of the drug culture. In the two sections of the book, Baudelaire first describes the effects hashish in his Le Poeme du Haschisch and secondly describes the effects of opium and analyzes and translates portions of Thomas De Quincey's 1821 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in Un Mangeur D'Opium. Baudelaire had first explored these subjects in 1851 in Du vin et du haschisch. We trace other examples of art bindings on this title and the deep red of the binding with its Calderesque designs complements the nature of the text. Clouzot p.27; Carteret I, p.126.
C
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