Title: Les chansons de Bilitis Traduites du grec par Pierre Louÿs et ornées d’un portrait de Bilitis dessiné par P. Albert Laurens d’après le buste polychrôme du Musée du Louvre
Description: <p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">8vo. pp. 336. Morocco-backed marbled boards. Bookplate of Silvain Brunschwig on front endpaper. Copy no. 209 of 550 copies ‘sur vélin.’</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">Limited 1898 Mercure de France edition of the invention of facile erotic poems of Bilitis by Pierre Louÿs, which he soon proudly acknowledged, but only after permitting his early readers to imagine a Greek original, composed by a lesbian courtesan of the sixth century BC, the imaginary friend of Sappho. Still, their literary merit has kept them alive. This edition contains the first printing of the entirely spurious portrait of Bilitis herself, ‘d’après la buste polychrôme du Musée du Louvre.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">See Bib# /Fr# 1326 in this collection for the limited first edition of 1895, prefaced by Louÿs’ imaginary ‘Vie de Bilitis’, appropriately bound in goatskin with ‘crocodile’ onlays, and six original crayon drawings by Jacques Lestrille inserted.</span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/catalog/bib_4102964" rel="ugc nofollow">Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.</a></span></span></p>