MONNIER, Henri

Les Petites Félicités et les Petites Misères Humaines

Paris: Delpech, 1829. Item #04492

Henry Monnier's Parody on Thomas Rowlandson's Miseries of Human Life
"From Childhood to Old Age"

MONNIER, Henry. Les Petites Félicités et Les Petites Misères Humaines. Paris: Delpech, 1829.

Oblong quarto (10 x 13 1/8 inches; 253 x 332 mm.).

Ten fine and amusing hand colored lithograph plates (all mounted on stubs).

Bound ca. 1925 by René Kieffer (with his binders label on verso of front end-paper) in half dark blue straight-grain morocco over marbled boards. Spine decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt, marbled end-papers. Fine. The amusing images cover life in France from L'Enfance to La Vieilesse (from Childhood to Old Age).

The plates:

Les Petites Félicités
1. L'Enfance.
2. La Jeunesse.
3. L'Age Mur.
4. La Vieillesse.
5. La Chaleur.

Les Petites Misères Humaines
1. L'Enfance.
2. La Jeunesse.
3. L'Age Mur.
4. Vieillesses.
5. Le Froid.

Exceptionally rare with only one copy in libraries and institutions worldwide: The Gordon N. Ray copy (dated as 1840) at the Morgan Library & Museum (NY, USA).

"When Henry Monnier was barely old enough to trot off to school in his first pair of buttoned trousers and Charles Dickens was not yet born, Rowlandson was publishing the Comforts of Bath, and Miseries of Human Life. These humorous sketches of contemporary society suggest in their general plan and point of view Monnier's Esquisses Parisiennes (1827), Vues de Paris (1829), and various other works containing groups of scenes connected by a central theme, particularly the Petites Misères Humaines, for which Monnier may have borrowed Rowlandson's title and its companion work, Les Petites Félicités Humaines (1829). (Edith Melcher. The Life and Times of Henry Monnier, p.37).

Marie, 427-431 & 432-436; Melcher, p.37. Not mentioned in Gordon Ray. The Art of the French Illustrated Book.
Assumedly Gordon Ray must have acquired his copy after his book was published.

Price: $6,500.00