Grèce / Terre aimée des Dieux

1ère édition. 121 pp.+40 ills. h.t. 33,5x25,5 cm. Paris, 1932. Édition numérotée, N.296/400.

--- Full leather (private binding). Spine in six compartments, gilt lettering to second and fourth. Light edgewear. Pages bright and clean. Very tight binding. 32 b&w and 8 colour illustrations (photographs and engravings) h.t. (More photos are available)

--- The French historian and journalist René Puaux (1878-1936) worked for the internationally renowned Parisian newspaper "Le Temps" and was a fervent supporter and advocate of the Greek cause during the Balkan Wars. His reports from the front were collected in two publications, "Dans les Balkans" 1912-13, and "La malhereuse Epire", which was translated into Greek. In 1919 he was sent as correspondent to Asia Minor and on his return journey crossed Thrace and reached Mesolongi. In all he made seven trips to Greece, a country he loved passionately.
In this edition (which was also published in Greek in 1995), he records in an engaging and enthusiastic manner his impressions from his seventh trip, in 1930, at the time of the celebration of the centenary of the independent Greek State. At that time he visited Athens and its monuments, as well as Daphni, Thermopylae and Hypati, Delphi at the time of the Delphic festival, and then Corinth, Patras, Andravida, Cyparissia and almost all of the southwest Peloponnese. After his visit to the Navarino area, he decided to donate to the town of Pylos his private collection of engravings, documents, maps, medals, coins and memorabilia of the Greek Struggle for Independence, mainly relating to the battle of Navarino (1827). Since 1992 the collection has been housed temporarily in the renovated Barracks of Maison in the Niocastro of Pylos.
Ioli Vingopoulou (from the site of Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation)