Le Paysan de Paris The Peasant of Paris - Signed by Henri Cartier-Bresson - Louis Aragon, Henri Cartier-Bresson 1994 - The Limited editions Club, New York - Number 89 of 300 copies. ‘I was seeking… a new kind of novel that would break all the traditional rules governing the writing of fiction… a novel that the critics would be obliged to approach empty-handed’ – Louis Aragon.

A large (32x42cm) beautiful and superbly produced limited edition folio of Louis Aragon’s outstanding Surrealist novel – in which he compares a poet’s love for his city to a peasant’s love for his land – illustrated and signed by Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of only 300 copies. Translated into English by Simon Watson-Taylor.

Stunningly illustrated with seven original lithographs and a photogravure by Henri Cartier-Bresson. The lithographs were pulled by Bruce Porter at his Trestle Editions studio in New York. The photogravure was printed by Jon Goodman on French-made Arjo Wiggins stock.

Bound in silk and provided with a matching felt lined silk slipcase.
  First published in 1926, ‘Le Paysan de Paris’ is today considered one of the central Surrealist texts and a work that helps define the movement itself. Avoiding any recognisable characterisation or form, Aragon’s narrative is both unconventional and lyrical – in his own words, ‘a mythology of the modern’. Using the city of Paris as a framework, Aragon interlaces the text with the city’s ephemera: café menus, maps, inscriptions on monuments, and newspaper clippings, together with the lives of its citizens. His detailed descriptions of a Parisian passage, the nineteenth-century precursor to the mini-mall, and of the Buttes-Chaumont park, are the great set pieces within Aragon’s swirling philosophical, dreamlike, and satirical prose.

References:
Exact Change, web. Bill Majure, LEC Checklist, 565.

Folio (book size 32x42cm), pp. [6] 163 [11]. Publisher’s grey-green Japanese silk, lettered in dark green to spine and front board, and housed in matching grey-green silk slipcase.
  Condition: Fine, in fine slipcase.   Ref: 108172   Price: HK$ 9,000