Histoire comique
One of the first 60 numbered copies on Imperial Japan paper (no. 19).
Robert Hoe copy, in a delicate embroidered binding commissioned by him for himself from the Club Bindery, the Grolier Club's own workshop (with bookplate).
The Club Bindery was the bindery of Robert Hoe (New York, 1839–London, 1909), whose family had emigrated from England to America in 1803. Hoe made his fortune in the printing industry and assembled one of the most extraordinary libraries in America. In 1884 he founded the Grolier Club of New York with eight other wealthy bibliophiles, including Edwin Holden. For several years he maintained a bindery there, the Club Bindery (founded by Edwin Holden in 1895), in order to introduce fine binding to the United States according to European standards. The bindery was directed by Maillard, who, before settling in New York, had been one of the leading Parisian binders, trained in the French tradition, notably under Marius Michel. The Club Bindery ceased operations in 1909.
Histoire comique, first published under the title Chevalier, is a novella whose plot was inspired by a passage in the memoirs of Mademoiselle Clairon, in which the celebrated eighteenth-century actress recounts how a dead man “returns” to her every evening with a long, piercing cry. While she herself was not greatly affected, the same cannot be said of Félicie Nanteuil, a young actress at the Théâtre de l’Odéon, who is at the center of the story and with whom Chevalier — an actor torn between his profession and his love for the young woman — falls in love.
The novella was adapted for film under the title Félicie Nanteuil by Marc Allégret in 1942.