= Splendid, delicate publication. Carteret II, p.95. According to Carteret only a few copies were printed on Japanese paper. Third edition, the first to be illustrated by Manet. The printed backwrapper lists other delicacies by the same publisher: "Curiosités littéraires, volumes et plaquettes de luxe tirés à très petit nombre publiés par Léon Vanier (...)."
"Julie L. Mellby, Stéphane Mallarmé and Édouard Manet (Princeton): "In 1865, Stéphane Mallarmé composed a poem about the sensual experiences of a faun who wakes from an afternoon nap and recounts his encounter with several nymphs earlier in the day. Originally titled Le Faune, intermède héroique (The Faun, a Heroic Intermezzo), Mallarmé submitted it to the Théâtre-Français, only to be rejected. Ten years later, the work was again rejected, under the title Improvisation d’un Faune, by Alphonse Lemerre, who had previously published Mallarmé work in Parnasse contemporain. Mallarmé left Lemerre and found Alphonse Derenne, a publisher of medical books who wanted to expand his business. Under the title L’après-midi d’un faune, Mallarmé’s pastoral was finally published in April 1876. His best friend, Édouard Manet (1832-1883), created four wood-engraved embellishments that were printed in black and hand tinted in pink by Manet himself to save money. Although Mallarmé is a seminal figure of our modern literary heritage, few editions of his own work were published during his lifetime. Mallarmé’s work would become the inspiration for many musical pieces, the most prominent of which was Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894), a ten-minute tonal interpretation of Faune. Other composers who adapted the melodic aspects of Mallarmé’s poetry were Maurice Ravel in Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé (1913), Darius Milhaud with Chansons bas de Stéphane Mallarmé (1917), and Pierre Boullez, whose hour-long solo soprano and orchestra piece Pli selon pli (1957-62). The poem also served as the basis for the ballet L’après-midi d’un faune, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky for the Ballets Russes and first performed in the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on May 29, 1912. Nijinsky danced the main part himself, which became a seminal moment in the history of dance."
Wrappers frayed/ creased along edges and slightly dustsoiled.