At the beginning of January I discovered a 19th century French book selling for a very affordable £ 1.50 at a charity shop and really liked the look of it so I just bought it without thinking much about it.
With a leather back and nice marbling on the hardcovers it looks like this:
It's a first edition of Le docteur Pascal, the last volume of Emile Zola's epic series of novels Les Rougeon-Macquart, from 1893. Sadly somebody cut out the family tree of the Rougeon-Macquart family which was included as a fold-out page. Otherwise it is in good condition, slightly foxed as they like to say in the trade but I love it.
More photos:
The good thing about French books in the Oxford second hand and antiquarian market is that there's supply from expats and visiting academics but virtually no demand, so I can snap up some rather amazing things sometimes (I don't do that for German books very often these days because I get them free in the street libraries in Dusseldorf, but see this one and these from pre-plague times). Abe books currently has several copies of the Zola for sale at prices of a few hundred pounds, so I think I managed to find a bargain here ...
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