JANIN Jules L’Âne mort.

Clouzot, 137 ; Carteret, III, 314 ; Vicaire, IV, 520.

First illustrated edition, published in 33 issues. It is decorated with a portrait of the author engraved on steel by Revel, 12 plates by Tony Johannot engraved on wood by Hébert, J. Thompson, Lavieille, printed on a tinted background, as well as 100 vignettes on wood in the text.

An exceptional copy, with an autograph inscription from Jules Janin on the half-title "à mon cher ami L. Grangier de la Marinière. Son ami J.Janin".

"Louis René Antoine Grangier de la Marinière (1814-1882) fut député sous Louis-Philippe. Nommé, en 1840, attaché d'ambassade à Madrid par M. Thiers, il suivit la fortune politique de ce dernier, donna sa démission à l'avènement du ministre Guizot, collabora à divers journaux, et publia, notamment dans le Constitutionnel, une série de Lettre remarquées sur les élections anglaises" (A. Robert & G. Cougny, Dictionnaire des parlementaire français de 1789 à 1889).

He was also a bibliophile and was listed as a contributor to Techener's Bulletin du bibliophile et du bibliothécaire, where he was described as a "great amateur" who attended various library sales. (Bulletin du Bibliophile, 1861, vol.26, p.127)

With L'Âne mort Janin tried the Gothic vein of the roman noir, often deliberately falling into parody. The work depicts the descent into hell of Henriette, a young woman from the provinces who comes to Paris to make her fortune, only to encounter misery. The novel becomes a series of macabre decapitations and scenes of horror.

One of the most macabre passages is undoubtedly to be found in Chapter V, entitled "La soirée médicale". It presents the pseudo-resurrection of a drowned man in the middle of a Parisian salon. Johannot succeeds in showing the full horror of this vision, by presenting in full light this dying man with empty eyes adorned in a shroud. The artist did not forget the detail of his torn-off leg, carefully placed in the shadow of the table. The crowd of onlookers, surrounding and watching him, reinforces the impression of heaviness and unease inherent in the passage.

In many of his productions Janin became a literary figure, enjoying playing with the rules of literary genres. L'Âne Mort is no exception to the rule, with Janin resorting to a number of commonplaces in the noir novel, but he also parodies Victor Hugo's Dernier Jour d'un condamné, from which he borrows the title of his pamphlet for chapter XXV of his novel. While Hugo's intention was clearly to produce a text against the death penalty, Janin's motivation was quite different. The latter did not really like his colleague's work, which he had already bitterly reviewed on 3 February 1829 in La Quotidienne ("C’est à en devenir fou […] une agonie de trois cents pages"). As with his Contes fantastiques, which, according to the author himself, were fantastic in name only, the aim was simply to appeal to a literary lineage that could have an impact on his work.

It was also a writing exercise for the author, who constantly reworked his novel until 1865, the last time it was published during Janin's lifetime. This was the 7th edition, in which the subtitle disappeared. In his last preface, which had the air of a retrospective, Janin admitted to loving the novel « comme son premier-né ».

A very good copy, plates slightly yellowed.