LAUTRÉAMONT (Comte de). Les Chants de Maldoror. Paris, Albert Skira, 1934. In-4, black box, boards and spine decorated with inlays of black ostrich skin set in a large red notch, the title of the book also treated in notch, lining and endpapers of carmine velvet calf, untrimmed, folder, slipcase (Leroux 1993). The most beautiful book illustrated by Salvador Dali, containing 42 original etchings in and out of the text. Skira's edition of Les Chants de Maldoror marks an important date in the publication of 20th-century artists' books. This extraordinary text, rediscovered by the Surrealists and symbolising the victory of the imagination over reality, was a decisive source of inspiration for the writers and painters in André Breton's group. The illustrations here take up the Catalan's obsessive and ingenious leitmotivs, such as Millet's Angelus, soft monsters and spectres, mixed with elements of Isidore Ducasse's text. One of the first 40 deluxe copies signed by Dali with a separate suite of etchings with remarks, from a unique edition of 210 copies on Arches vellum. A masterly binding by Georges Leroux, a subtle evocation of the beginning of the fourth canto. He produced one in the same style for Renaud Gillet (Bibliothèque Henri Paricaud, 1996, no. 47). The plates in the suite are foxed. Fornès, Dali illustrator p. 103; Mischler and Lopsinger, 11-54; Rauch, 53.