[L’Ensorcelée]
Complete suite of Buhot's six plates: “Le Pâtre”; “Un Chemin de perdition”; “Elle venait lentement”; “Thomas Le Hardouay”; “La Vision”; “L'Enterrement”; to which is added the portrait of the author by Rajon.
The Lemerre edition of 1878 forms the inaugural text of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Œuvres complètes, which the publisher would continue to issue until 1889. As Jean-Luc Dufresne recalls, the illustrations for L’Ensorcelée and Le Chevalier Destouches were “produced spontaneously, without any commission” by Buhot, who met Barbey d’Aurevilly in 1872; the writer in turn introduced him to the publisher Alphonse Lemerre. Barbey d’Aurevilly greatly admired Buhot’s work, saying that he “dreamed with a mind identical to [his] own.” Bénézit notes that, for this painter, “the best of his work lies in the delicate illustrations he produced for a few of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s novels… As an engraver he distinguished himself through the intense expressiveness of his prints and his profound understanding of effects of light and shadow…”
When publishing his volumes, Lemerre sold the suites separately so that they could later be bound into the volumes. Two issues exist: one on laid paper, the other on China paper.