L'Art de Réussir dans le Monde

Paris: Martinet, 1855. The Art of Success in the World!
An Ironic, Satiric Burlesque by Cham

CHAM [Pseudonym of Charles Amédée de Noé]. L'Art de Réussir dans le Monde. Procédé Simple et Facile pour se Faire Jeter a la Porte en Fort peu de Temps. Paris: Martinet, [1855].

Large quarto (13 1/4 x 10 in; 337 x 254 mm.). Lithographed title with large hand-colored pictorial vignette, twenty hand-colored lithographed plates by Fernique after Cham, the plates containing three or more images (a total of sixty-two), each with droll captions.

Publisher's red cloth, covers decoratively stamped in blind, front cover decoratively lettered in gilt. Expertly rebacked in matching red cloth. Small rectangular sheet of paper tipped-on to the front end-paper with a short description of this book. A fine and clean copy.

A very rare volume with OCLC/KVK locating only two copies in institutions worldwide, at the Victoria & Albert Library and Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire (Strasbourg). The book was also issued without hand-coloring and OCLC locates two plain copies: The Morgan Library & Museum (NY, USA) and Harvard University, Houghton Library (MA, USA)

"It is to be regretted that space will not serve to represent the caricaturists and depictors of manners who followed in the wake of Daumier and Gavarni. Among the most attractive of the former is Amédée de Noé, known as Cham (that is, Ham, the son of Noah) of whom it was said that he had ‘an idea a day' for Le charivari. A good proportion of his thousands of lithographs were gathered into albums. His contributions to the Album du siège , in which Daumier was his collaborator, are typical of his work" (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, pp. 155-156).