Scarce Stories
MAGRE, Maurice.
Les trois métiers de Jeannet. Les bons tours d’Yan. Paris, Hachette (Bibliothèque des écoles et des familles), [s.d. (but 1911?)].
8vo, pp. 16; lithographed illustrations; uniform light browning; a good copy in the publisher’s original red and black printed boards, endpapers renewed; corners lightly bumped, spine sunned, a few light marks to lower board, book label seemingly excised from front pastedown.
Two scarce children’s stories, published as part of Hachette’s ‘Bibliothèque des écoles et des familles’.
The poet, writer, and playwright Maurice Magre (1877–1941) was named Commandeur of the Légion d’honour in 1913 and in 1937 received the Grand Prix de littérature de l’Académie française. Hachette’s series of children’s books began in the late nineteenth century and featured several works by authors such as Joséphine Colomb and Albert Cim, as well as Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop (Le magasin d’antiquités) in translation. Les trois métiers de Jeannet (pp. 1-8) follows a cobbler’s son attempting to seek his fortune, working in turns as a soldier, a tailor, and an astronomer, and saving a princess from a tower in the process, whilst Les bon tours d’Yan tells the story of a cunning young peasant who wins the heart of a baron’s daughter.
Lorenz 24, p. 694 (calling for a 1911 edition only). OCLC finds copies at the Bibliothèque nationale de France only.