Paris: Editions Mornay, 1926

Small 4to, pp. 233. Quarter bound in floral design boards, burgundy date and title labels to green spine, lettered in gilt. Leading and lower edges uncut. Original spine bound in to rear, small bookplate to front pastedown. 12 engraved plates after Umberto Brunelleschi, title border and illustrations after Maurice L’Hoir, all coloured by the pochoir process. Small areas of offsetting to preliminaries from the bookplate, otherwise a near fine, very well preserved copy in a contemporary binding.

No. 192 of 350 copies on Hollande à la forme, of a total edition of 463 copies.

Etienne Troufleau [1892-1944] was a French journalist. He spent five years in Tahiti in the early 1920s, an experience which provided him with the setting for this novel, published in 1926 under his pen-name Jean Dorsenne. Troufleau travelled extensively in Indochina during the 1930s, and was writing for an anti-Nazi paper when he was arrested in 1942. He was murdered in Buchenwald concentration camp the following year.

With the bookplate of G.M.O. Barclay to front pastedown.