About the cover:

Dark red marocco leather, 5 bands, wide hand-gilt frame with several lines blind and gold-stamped on front and back cover with delicate rosettes, spine design based on cover frame, hand-gilt spine title in the second panel, standing and inside edge gilding, gilt head edge, hand-stitched endpapers, black silk endpapers, simple slipcase edged with leather, marbled paper cover.

About the content:

Henri Barbusse: L'enfer

With 24 original etchings by Edouard Chimot.

First illustrated edition. Edition of 442 copies. Ex. No. 160 of 355 on Vélin d'Arches, Les Grands Livres du XXe Siècle, Paris, 1921 A thirty-year-old man, bored with life, finds a job at a Parisian bank. He lives in a guest house and, in the darkness of his room, sees a crack in the wall through which he can observe a wide variety of people...

This first novel by Barbusse is characterised by decadence and eroticism, an attack on society and its institutions.

About the artist: Three Gruel generations successfully ran the workshop founded by Isidore Deforges in 1811. In 1825, Deforges handed it over to his son-in-law Pierre Paul Gruel, who had learnt to be an engraver but very quickly became involved in bookbinding. When he died in 1846, his widow continued the business, initially alone and from 1850 together with her second husband, Jean Engelmann, a renowned lithographer. From 1875, Léon Gruel, her son from her first marriage in 1841, continued to run the company. Initially together with Edmond Engelmann, her son from her second marriage, and then alone from 1892. The expertise and intelligence of the well-educated Léon made the company the top address in Paris. Shortly after the death of his wife in 1902, he moved to the south of France with an ailment and left the business to his son Paul Gruel, born in 1864. He ran the well-established and well-known bookbindery until his death in 1954. In 1928, Paul Gruel became a Knight of the Legion of Honour.