Quinze histoires d’Edgar Poë

Artist Louis Auguste Mathieu Legrand (French, 1863-1951)

Artist Louis Legrand (French, 1863-1951)

Author Edgar Allan Poe (American, 1809-1849)

Author Charles Baudelaire (translator) (French, 1821-1867)

Publisher Chamerot et Renouard (for the Société des Amis des Livres), Paris, 1897

Printer aquatints: MM. Porcabeuf, Paris; decorations and text: Chamerot et Renouard, Paris, reproductions from line cuts made by MM. Duco

Date1897

DimensionsBook: H: 11 in. (280 mm); W: 7 5/8 in. (194 mm); Depth: 1 7/16 in. (37 mm).
Page (untrimmed): H: 10 3/4 in. (273 mm); W: 7 3/8 in. (188 mm).

MediumOriginal prints: 30 aquatints on ivory wove paper (2 states each of 15 plates). Reproductions: 17 line block reproductions of drawings, and 16 photolithographs of drawings, incl. the wrappers. Text: letterpress. Paper: Marais cream wove paper watermarked with the monogram device of the Société des Amis des Livres.

ClassificationBooks

Credit LineGift of Molly and Walter Bareiss

Object number

1984.674

Not on View

Label TextLouis Legrand, Quinze histoires d’Edgar Poë (Fifteen Stories by Edgar [Allan] Poe). Text by Edgar Allan Poe (1897) Louis Legrand was commissioned to illustrate a selection of Poe’s short stories by the Société des Amis des Livres (The Society of the Friends of Books), a Parisian book-collecting society. Legrand’s usual subject matter involved Parisian nightlife: cafés, prostitutes, dancers, and dandies. It was, therefore, with some reluctance that Legrand undertook the aquatints for Poe’s dark and mysterious writings, translated into French by poet Charles Baudelaire. However, Legrand had learned etching in 1885 from Belgian artist Félicien Rops, who was famous for his erotic, macabre, and even perverse imagery. Legrand had adopted a tendency towards some of these qualities in his own work, which he drew on in creating images for Poe’s text. One of the openings displayed is from the gruesome gothic story Berenice (1835), in which a disturbed young man performs some postmortem dental surgery. The other opening is from the humorous and satirical Some Words with a Mummy (Petite discussion avec une momie) (1850). Here an ancient Egyptian (named Allamistakeo) comes back to life to berate the group of scientists and amateurs preparing to dissect him. The story cleverly deflates some assertions of “Yankee ingenuity” and the assumption of the superiority of modern life in the Industrial Age.Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, Don't Feed the Books: Birds, Bugs, and Bestiaries Featuring the Molly and Walter Bareiss Collection of Modern Illustrated Books, April 13-July 1, 2001

Toledo Museum of Art, Splendid Pages: The Molly and Walter Bareiss Collection of Modern Illustrated Books, Feb. 14--May 11, 2003.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Mummies: From Egypt to Toledo, February 3- May 6, 2018.