Beschreibung:

Title: La Sainte Bible selon la Vulgate. Traduction nouvelle; aves les dessins de Gustave Doré Author: Dore, Gustave Place: Tours, France Publisher: Alfred Mame et Fils, Editeurs Date: 1866 Description: Two volumes in one. With 228 wood-engraved illustrations from designs by Gustave Doré 17x22½, bound by Chambolle-Duru in near contemporary crushed brown French morocco, covers framed by two wide borders elaborately tooled in blind, spine lettered in gilt, compartments elaborately blind tooled, marbled endpapers, edges gilt on the rough. First Doré Edition. Magnificent copy of the Doré Bible, one of a very few copies printed on papier de Chine, with the plates and text in immaculate, unblemished condition. Owing to the fact that this copy was printed on the finest paper, it is completely free from foxing which mars all others belonging to the ordinary issue. This is justifiably one of the most popular illustrated Bibles ever printed: the work was translated into at least 24 different languages, including Armenian, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Esperanto, Yiddish, Hebrew, Finnish, Serbian, Croatian, etc. It was even mentioned by Mark Twain in Chapter Four of Tom Sawyer when the author interrupts the narrative to enquire: "How many of my readers would have the industry and application to memorize two thousand verses, even for a Doré Bible?" Indeed, it is one of the very few Bibles which has always been known by the name of its illustrator (the Chagall Bible also comes to mind). "One indication of the significance of the Doré Bible illustrations is the fact that they have been and are still so highly praised and used by so many different groups. The Roman Catholic Church has never diminished its praise of these illustrations. The Doré illustrations were still featured in U.S. Catholic Bibles published in recent decades by the Daughters of St. Paul. There were over 100 Protestant editions of the Doré Bible illustrations published in the U.S. in the last third of the nineteenth-century. Stories about the influence of the Doré Bible were legion. They were so popular that Doré expanded on them in enormous paintings which later filled the Doré Gallery in London. It was considered the greatest collection of religious paintings in the world" (Malan, Doré, p. 85). This first edition is distinguished from the second (which carries the erroneous date of "1866") by the fact that the in the first edition the translators' names (J.-J. Bourassé and P. Janvier) do not appear on the title pages. PROVENANCE: René Descamps- Scrive, with gilt book-label. Louis Dézé, Gustav Doré, 68. Vicaire III, cols. 474-477. Lot Amendments Condition: A few of the pages with very short, marginal tears, still in fine condition, a beautiful copy. Item number: 167649