DRAINS (Geo A.) - LAFORGUE (Jules). Les Complaintes. Paris : Éditions du Sagittaire, Simon Kra, [1923]. - In-4, 254 x 202: frontispiece, (4 ff. first two blanks), 231 pp, (4 ff. last two blanks), printed cover. Maroquin each is decorated with a different mosaic composition inspired by two illustrations of the book, that of the first plate depicting a dragon at the foot of a rock on which stands a man with his arms raised, and that of the second plate representing the head of an old woman, double ribbed spine decorated with the title of the book in mosaic letters of brown morocco, bands of garnet, black, purple and beige morocco framed inside, lining and endpapers of orange moiré silk, double endpapers, gilt head, untrimmed, cover and spine preserved, slipcase (Franz) Beautiful edition at 500 copies, illustrated with one hundred and forty original lithographs by Geo A. DRAINS, including one in color in the frontispiece and thirty-nine in sanguine in the bas-de-lampe, at the head of a chapter overflowing the text or on full page. The title announces only one hundred and twenty-eight lithographs. One of the first twenty-five copies on imperial paper of Japan, this one being one of the fifteen including a suite in black on chine pastedown of the lithographs. There are one hundred and thirty-nine proofs on chine, the one on page 8 is missing. This seems common, the other copies for which we found a precise collation, also have a suite of one hundred and thirty-nine of the one hundred and forty lithographs. A splendid copy in a mosaic binding by Franz who reproduced on the boards the lithographs on pages 216 and 93; it has been enriched with two additional states on chine of the frontispiece. The dust jacket seems to be missing, the edges of the slipcase cracked. The china print of the lithograph on page 166 has been bound between pages 170 and 171.