BURNAT-PROVINS, Marguerite. Le Livre pour toi.

Paris: [Frazier-Soye for], Société des Cent Femmes amies des livres, 1935. First edition. Softcover. 26cm by 20cm. [8], 123, [3] pages including 25 etched plates by Mariette Lydis. First edition for the Société des Cent Femmes and with the Lydis illustrations, of an erotic collection first published in 1908. This is copy 45 for Madame Didier Poulain (most likely Dorothy Alice Jackson Poulain, the American wife of French officer Didier Poulain). Marguerite Burnat-Provins was considerably ahead of her time with this sensuous text of female desire and description of the nude male body, using language that male poets had historically used to describe female nudes. The women’s bibliophile circle, Société des Cent Femmes amies des livres was founded in 1927. This was a subscription society, producing a series of well-printed books between 1927 and 1968, usually with woodcut or engraved illustrations, limited to 130 copies only. The club was limited, as the name denotes, to 100 women at any one time and founding member included the comtesse de Noailles, Madame Funck-Brentano and the Princesse Ghika (née Hazel-Marie Paliner-Singer). It was one of two major women’s bibliophilic clubs founded in the 1920s, the other being Les Cent Une founded in 1926, who also commissioned a book from Lydis. Worldcat lists no copies outside continental Europe. This is a good copy, some light foxing to covers and endpapers, two stains to first plate, one on the image, otherwise a nice copy housed in the publisher’s slipcase. The slipcase again with some light foxing, and arrears of rubbing. Still a solid example of this scarce volume.