Description

FIRST EDITION. 
One of 2500 numbered copies on vélin des Marais.

Rare and very elegant Art-deco binding signed Lucie Meyer Edgar FaureThe interior is made up of a large mosaic of leather and shagreen.

Born into an Alsatian family, Lucie Meyer (1908-1977) was guided towards literature by her uncle Julien Cain from an early age. After studying art history at the Sorbonne, she established herself as an art bookbinder and exhibited at a number of salons, including the Salon des Indépendants in 1930 and the Salon du Livre d'Art in 1931, alongside Rose Adler, Louise-Denise Germain, Anita Conti, Germaine Schrœder, Marius Michel and Léon Gruel. That same year, she married the future French Prime Minister and Minister of State Edgar Faure, and henceforth signed her bindings Lucie Meyer, but Lucie Edgar-Faure. Thanks to the quality of her work, she quickly achieved international renown, and in 1937 the City of Paris commissioned her to bind the Livres d'Or presented to the princesses of England. But the war put an end to her bookbinding activities, and Lucie Edgar-Faure's artistic output lasted less than ten years. The couple took refuge in Algiers, where her husband joined General de Gaulle's staff. She took up a post as attaché to the Foreign Affairs Commissariat of the Comité de Libération Nationale, and her activities shifted towards a form of cultural and political action. In 1943, Lucie Faure and Robert Aron founded the N.E.F. (Nouvelles Éditions françaises), the first magazine published in Paris after the Liberation, which she has continued to edit ever since. An astute political advisor alongside her husband, she began a literary career after the successful publication of her Diary of a trip to China (1958), and published a dozen books, winning the Prix Sévigné in 1964 and the Prix Sainte-Beuve in 1968.

The body of the book, signed Lucie Meyer, and the binding, signed Lucie Edgar-Faure, suggest that it was sewn before 1931 and covered after that date.

Nice condition.