Giacomo Casanova

Over de originele editie / About the original edition

 

This edition of Casanova's Histoire de ma Vie was issued in 1931-1932 by the Parisian publishers Javal et Bourdeaux under the more common known title of the Histoire: 'Mémoires de Casanova', in ten quarto volumes of 2335 copies each.

Of this impression 2000 copies were printed on vélin du Marais, numbered from 336 to 2335.

225 copies on vélin d'Arches, numbered 111-335, each carrying two states of the Leroux-prints: in colour and in bistre (brown).

75 copies on vélin d'Arches, numbered 36-110, each carrying three states of the Leroux-prints: in colour, in bistre (brown), in blue, and with one original water colour.

35 copies on Japanese Imperial, numbered 1-35, with the images in three states (as before) and each with three original water colours.

This Internet presentation has been based on number 354.

The original edition was printed by Maître imprimeur R. Coulouma in Argenteuil.

The original water colours by Auguste Leroux have been reproduced by way of a technique which is no longer used by publishers nowadays: the technique 'au pochoir'. In it the image is 'divided' in several parts or colours, the 'space' of each part or colour being cut out in a carton mask, all the different masks together constituting the complete image. Thus, one water colour or drawing by the artist was handled for reproduction, somewhere half-way between 'exemplaires uniques' by the artist and mass production from the printing press. Such illustrations were mostly handled by 'ateliers' where gifted young women worked themselves through the day by doing their part or colour. In the case of our Casanova edition the images were produced from Leroux' original water colours by the Ateliers Daniel Jacomet & Cie, Paris.