[Alfred de MUSSET ?] Gamiani ou deux nuits d'excès. Brussels - Lot 23

[Alfred de MUSSET ?] Gamiani ou deux nuits d'excès. Brussels, 1833. Large in-4 of 26 pp. with two columns, 12 plates on Charcon filgrané paper, red half-maroquin à la Bradel with corners, untrimmed, gilt head, illustrated cover preserved (binding circa 1890). Extremely rare first edition: illustrated with 12 erotic lithographs colored and gummed at the time. The two-column autographed album appeared in two quires, each containing an account of a night of debauchery. The first had a title page bearing: Gamiani ou une nuit d'excès. As a second night was published, the original cover was no longer relevant, and was replaced by a new one entitled: Gamiani ou deux nuits d'excès. "Redrawing a second cover page to dress up the whole [...] now posed an insoluble problem for the bookbinders of the two cahiers des lithographies who, in the majority of cases, only kept one or other of the two covers, but never both!" (Jacques Duprilot). The present copy includes the second cover. A famous "Curiosa", a masterpiece of erotic literature, whose attribution to Alfred de Musset has been disputed: the 12 lithographs have been attributed to Achille Devéria and Octave Tassaert, an artist dear to Baudelaire. In his preface to the reprint published in 1980, Jacques Duprilot emphasized the rarity of the work: "If Gamiani's original, which is still cited only by hearsay, is rightly considered one of the white robins of erotic bibliophilia, it is not due to the chance of a judicial seizure whose trail has been lost, but rather, we believe, to a very dear wish of its authors and illustrators. The print run of this obscene and violently anti-clerical hors-série was deliberately limited, as if this curiosity could only be understood by a select few libertines." A pleasant copy bound in the late 19th century, complete with the 12 original lithographs, all colored and gummed. Some plates are foxed, and appear to be from two different copies. Cover and two marginal cracks restored, one to a plate. We thank our colleague Hélène Bonafous-Murat, print expert, for her help. (Pia, Les Livres de l'Enfer, 554: "D'une grande rareté."- Nordmann, Bibliothèque érotique I, nº 288: the copy, acquired at auction by Julio Santo Domingo, is now kept at the Houghton Library, Harvard. - No copy in the Peyrefitte collection).