HUGO (Victor). - RUTY (Marcel-Pierre). Éviradnus. Paris : Société française d'éditions d'art, L.-Henry May, [1900]. - In-8, 255 x 180 : (2 ff.), 6 plates. Paperback, filled cover. First separate edition of this epic poem from La Légende des siècles. A partial edition was apparently published around 1872 under the title La Chanson d'Éviradnus, consisting of only six pages, and printed in a single copy for Sarah Bernhardt. (Cf. cat. 92 of the Pierre Berès bookshop, no. 571.) This poem is, with Ratbert and Le Petit Roi de Galice, the most important of La Légende des siècles; it is considered a veritable novel in verse in which legend is mixed with history . It is a work that perfectly brings together the good and the bad, Eviradnus being a knight errant, a righteous man, a crime fighter, helping the unfortunate and crushing the bad. The medieval and sometimes fantastic atmosphere of the text is perfectly illustrated by the painter Marcel-Pierre RUTY (1868-1937) who composed 26 drawings, six of which are out of the text, engraved on copper for the latter and on wood for the compositions in the text, by Pierre Gusman. Copy on vellum, not numbered, signed by Pierre Gusman at the justification. It is enriched with a suite of woodcuts on japon pelure, of the fumés on chine of 19 woodcuts, that is to say 36 proofs, of 3 proofs on thin japon of the woodcut on page 69, and of 23 states of the hors-texts (8 for the first one, one of which is in bistre signed by Ruty, 3 for the second, the fourth and the fifth one, 2 for the third one and 4 for the sixth one). Spine rebound, partly missing. The preserved part has been brought back. Some soiling on the front cover.