Les après-midi de Montmartre
May 17th, 2013 by houghtonmodern
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.
Today’s volume from the Santo Domingo Collection concerns Montmartre, the famous Parisian district of artists’ communes and nightclubs. In Les après-midi de Montmartre, published in 1919, author René Baudu documents the drinking, drug use, and prostitution that attended Montmartre’s heyday as the center of artistic life in Paris. Les après-midi de Montmartre describes, in fiction, the “lost girls” that inhabited the neighborhood, and the vagaries to which they were subject:
Montmartre girls need love, champagne, shots and a little mystery. What they mistake for love is a childish sentimentality found in music-hall songs and mass-market novels. (p. [17])
The text is accompanied by fourteen engravings by Édouard Chimot, depicting the young women of Montmartre. This copy is unusual in that the publisher, L’Édition, has been replaced on the wrappers and title page with “Pour le compte des auteurs” (“on behalf of the authors”); it also features an envelope bound in at the end with additional copies of the engravings in various colors and states, as well as two original pencil sketches. This special treatment is understandable in light of the volume’s provenance: it was specially printed for the author’s mother, Marie Baudu, and inscribed to her by her son.
René Baudu. Les après-midi de Montmartre. Paris: Pour le compte des auteurs, 1919. FC9.B3260.919a2.
Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.