Die Wahlverwandtschaften. 2 Bände. Tübingen, J. G. Cotta, 1809.

First edition (Hagen 327 D1), two volumes. Preliminary title and 306 pp.; 340 pp. Fischer records it in printing-paper and writing-paper states, with a small vellum issue for the author. Small octavo (160 × 96 mm).

Full signed brown-red morocco master bindings by Jean Stroobants, Paris, c. 1900, with gilt-ruled border frames to both boards and richly gilt spine compartments (paper and bindings in exceptional preservation).

The same first edition as the preceding copy appears here in a very different guise. If the contemporary-bound volume preserves Die Wahlverwandtschaften as its first readers met it, this set reflects the esteem in which the novel was held by the bibliophile culture of fin-de-siècle Europe; by 1900 it had become a text worth preserving in its most distinguished physical form.

That transformation is embodied in the bindings. Jean Stroobants (1856–1922), trained in the Paris workshops of Vignaux and Pasquier and successor to Victor Champs at 4 rue Gît-le-Cœur, belonged to the generation that brought French artistic binding to one of its last peaks before the First World War. His work joined technical precision to elegant proportion and restrained ornament, qualities suited to Goethe's mature masterpiece. In full brown-red morocco with gilt-ruled frames and richly gilt spines, the set turns the 1809 first edition into a distinguished example of Belle Époque craftsmanship, the restraint of its decoration characteristic of Stroobants at his best.

PROVENANCE

The Heribert Tenschert Collection.

REFERENCES

Hagen 327 D1; Goedeke IV/3, 388 (181); Kippenberg I, 384; Hirzel A 273; Fischer 704; Speck 2065; Brieger 725; Wilpert/Gühring 83.

On the binder: Fléty, Dictionnaire des relieurs français, p. 164; Devauchelle, La Reliure en France, III, p. 278; CERL Provenance Database, Champs–Stroobants.