Raboliot

In the field of inexpensive literary editions, two rival publishers vied from 1923 onward for the market in illustrated series: Fayard and Ferenczi. The former launched its collection “Le Livre de demain” in February 1923, the latter “Le Livre moderne illustré” in June of the same year. Both were emblematic of the revival of the wood-engraved illustrated book at a time when luxury books were becoming more widely accessible: “These two rival collections popularized French literature for two or three generations… Their success at the time owed much to their illustrations, chiefly wood engravings. This corpus of engravings is by far the largest, numerically, of the interwar period — on the order of ten thousand original blocks, that is, designed and engraved by the same artist.” (Jean-Michel Galland, “Les gravures sur bois des collections Fayard et Ferenczi,” Nouvelles de l’estampe, no. 254).

Ferenczi’s “Le Livre moderne illustré” collection ran until 1954, with a total of 366 titles. The texts were enriched with a series of interior illustrations, generally printed from original wood blocks. Its covers, well known to collectors and bibliophiles, are easily recognizable, featuring a monochrome-tinted wood engraving with “floral and animal” motifs in the Art Deco style, set within a design created by Clément Serveau. Serveau, after studying at the École nationale des arts décoratifs and then the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris from 1904 to 1914, became artistic director of Éditions Ferenczi in 1919. Using the wood-engraving technique, he illustrated seventy-eight of the collection’s titles, whose literary direction Colette oversaw for several years.

The artists’ wood engravings were reproduced “thanks to the valuable process of electrotyping, consisting of a copper cliché called a galvano, which reproduces the qualities of the original wood block with remarkable fidelity, allowing large print runs to be made without printing directly from the blocks themselves, which risked being worn or broken by excessive pressure.” (Carteret, Le Trésor du bibliophile: livres illustrés modernes).

Most French writers of the 1920s to 1940s had works published in this popular collection: Francis Carco, André Malraux, Georges Duhamel, Colette, Francis de Miomandre, François Mauriac, Joseph Kessel, Raymond Radiguet, André Maurois, Irène Némirovsky, Blaise Cendrars and Paul Morand. Few foreign authors appear in the series, though Stefan Zweig is a notable exception.

Maurice Genevoix entered the collection in 1926, with La Joie. Raboliot followed in early 1927, as the forty-fifth title in the series, a little over a year after winning the Prix Goncourt.

Another illustrated edition followed the same year: a colorful version illustrated with thirty wood engravings by Mathurin Méheut for the Cercle Parisien du Livre. Further illustrated editions followed, by Joseph Soulas (1928), Joseph Hémard (1930), Pierre Gandon (1941), Gaston Barret (1954), Jean Commère (1954), Paul Jarach (1955) and Paul Durand (1969).

From the library of Maurice Genevoix, at “Les Vernelles” (bookplate).