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Reviewed by:
  • La Chair du livre: matérialité, imaginaire et poétique du livre fin-de-siècle by Évanghélia Stead
  • Peter Cogman
La Chair du livre: matérialité, imaginaire et poétique du livre fin-de-siècle. Par évanghélia Stead. (Histoire de l'imprimé). Paris: Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2012. 566566 pp., ill.

As Évanghélia Stead notes, literary study predominantly considers texts independently of the medium in which they appeared; but we recall the material side of our first encounter with most works. Her study of fin-de-siècle books does not aim to be systematic or comprehensive, preferring to explore the complex ways in which we experience books (and also pamphlets, periodicals, posters) as material, multidimensional objects. Using a variety of approaches (historical, technological, iconographic), she considers layout, fonts, illustrations (including ex libris, frontispieces, ornamental letters, vignettes, tailpieces), ink, paper, and binding, and enlivens her discussion with personal anecdotes (including how she located fifteen items from Marcel Schwob's library in the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris). Through a range of examples centred on French and Belgian works but [End Page 431] also drawing from instances across Europe, Stead presents an illuminating series of case studies, focusing on both luxury editions for bibliophiles and mass-produced works, embracing the well-known (Beardsley's Salomé illustrations) and the forgotten (Henri Cresson's for a work of Gaston Lèbre), and moving from hieroglyphics in Rider Haggard's Cleopatra to those in a vulgar anecdote by George Auriol. While many works can now usefully be consulted on Gallica, Stead indicates the potential loss incurred in the process (the polychromatic exuberance of Octave Uzanne's L'Éventail, for instance, is absent). Although Mallarmé is omnipresent and his insights are often central, he is illuminatingly situated in the context in which his ideas appeared. The opening analysis of a bookcase by Rupert Carabin (now in the Musée d'Orsay) leads into five main sections. First Stead explores the changing relationships between texts and illustrations that invade, compete with, or embroider on them to create a hybrid work (in Jean Lorrain's Mélusine the illustrations have their own inter-iconic potential). Then she examines artists who worked with literary texts: Odilon Redon with Belgian books, Beardsley and Marcus Behmer with Wilde's Salomé, Gustav-Adolf Mossa's watercolours for J.-F. Louis Merlet's Salomé poems, where the contamination of text and image anticipates David Shenton's 1986 bande dessinée version of Wilde. The third section analyses the complexities of the embodiment of reading as a female figure, and the book itself as a female body; the fourth, the fin-de-siècle debt to the past both textually (Mendès, Heredia, Schwob) and visually, and its fascination with writing and writing implements (also potential weapons), moving from calligraphy to inkspots (suggesting creativity, futility, desirability, or immorality), in a protest against the uniformity of print. A final section shows the transcending of the traditional book in forms ranging from the fan-book (and an exploration of what the fan meant to the period) to Max Elskamp's experimental creations in which meaning is indissociable from the medium employed. Some minor reservations (Stead fails to note that the pose and composition of Félicien Rops's La Présidente are explicable because it was a frontispiece for Gautier's notorious Lettre) do not detract from an exhilarating and engrossing study, profusely illustrated, rooted in wide knowledge and close scrutiny, and demonstrating the boldness of the materiality of many works of the period: experimental, inventive, playful, code-transgressing, and providing food for thought for anyone reading modern editions of texts from the fin de siècle.

Peter Cogman
Southampton
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