Albert Robida, Voyage de Fiancailles Au XXe Siecle, Paris, Librairie L Conquet 1892,
12 Mo., first edition, in a fine binding by C H Meunier, in full green morocco tooled with beautiful silver and gilt whimsies on the covers, five raised bands, marbled endpapers with a gilt-ruled border, followed by the original colored endpapers bound in, a vignette title page, with a hand-written letter from Charles Meunier, the binder, inserted into the front endpapers, the book is 83 pages long, and all the edges are gilt.
The book is in French and the title means “An Engaging Trip to the 20th Century”. This is also a limited and numbered copy - it is No. 2 of 100 copies printed on Japon paper, so it is an early copy in the print run and very well executed. (The page after the colored illustration reads “H.A. Ete Tire, 100 Exemplaires sur japon numerotes, 200 exemplaires sur chine non mis dans le commerce”, which means there were a limited number made on japon paper - a very smooth, natural white sheet suitable for printmaking - and 200 copies made on chine paper that were basically proofs and weren’t meant for sale.)
Robida (1848 - 1926) did the artwork on the colored illustration which follows the title page - his name is signed at the bottom of the artwork - and he was a French illustrator, etcher, lithographer, caricaturist and novelist; through the 1880’s, he wrote an acclaimed trilogy of futurist novels, and that can be seen here in the whimsies on the front cover. He founded his own magazine La Caricature, and his futuristic works were often compared to the works of Jules Verne; unlike Verne, he proposed inventions that could be used in everyday life; his La Guerre au Vingtième Siècle described modern warfare, with robotic missiles and poison gas, and his Téléphonoscope was like a flat screen tv that delivered the latest news twenty-four hours a day, the latest plays, courses, and teleconferences, before televisions and computers were even invented. He also imagined the social consequences that arose from them - the social advancement of women, mass tourism, pollution, and so on - and he was a person well ahead of his time. This work is also reminiscent of H G Wells’ The Time Machine, and Robida’s book precedes Wells’ book by three years.
The book measures 7 3/8 x 5 in. wide and it is exquisite, in an extraordinary binding that is hard to imagine on a book so far ahead of its time.