About the cover:

Full-grain binding Wine-red marocco leather with all-over decoration of wavy, short lines and dots, gilt and embossed in black, various flowers embossed in gold and black in a rectangular field in the centre front and back, smooth spine with title in gold, gilt edges on three sides, hand-stitched endpapers, Mirror of grey-blue moirée silk with 2 cm wide decorated leather frame, flyleaf of the same moirée silk, chemise with spine and splint of the same leather, cover of marbled paper, title in gold on spine, lined with dark red smooth leather, slipcase with leather-bound opening and covered with the same marbled paper.

About the content:

Voltaire: Candide

Colour illustrations by Edmond Malassis

No. 138 of 176 copies on Vélin du Marais Édition L. Carteret, Paris 1922 Voltaire's satirical novel, which he wrote in 1758 in Verey, near Geneva, and which was published in 1759, describes new atrocities that people can do to each other on almost every page. All these murders, floggings, burnings, mutilations and natural disasters confront the philosophy of optimism, which goes back to Leibniz, with brutal reality.

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.