The Devil in Love - by Jacques Cazotte

 

Jean-Emile Laboureur

  1877 - 1943 (biography)

1925  

copperplate engravings; typset text 

images: various; book: 9-1.8 x 5-7/8 x 1/2" 

unsigned, as published 

318 of 365  

editioned on the colophon (preceding the title page) 

Godefroy 285; B.N. XII.92.309; Metropolitan Museum of Art accession no. 65.608 

soft, antique-white wove 

published 

Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York 

24170 

$175.00 

The Devil in Love, published in the French in 1772 as Le Diable amoureux, is an occult romance novel written in the "fantastique" style that was popular in France at the time. The author, Jacques Cazotte, was a member of public office in Martinique, France, and it wasn't until he had made commissioner-general that he took the time to pursue his passion for writing.

In The Devil in Love Don Alvaro, a young Spanish nobleman who dabbles in the occult, invokes the Devil. Upon seeing Alvaro the Devil falls in love and tranforms into a beautiful woman named Biondetta. The tale follows the actions of Biondetta who, disguising herself as Alvaro's page in order to remain by his side, attempts to seduce the honorable young man. This novel would prove to be the first of its style to address the predicaments that arise in stringently polite society when sex, love, and spirituality are in question. Cazotte himself came up against such judgements when his support for Martinist mysticism and anti-revolutionary sentiment sent him to the guillotine in 1792.

Jean-Emile Laboureur's engravings for this tale are emblematic of his 1920s Cubist-influenced linework. In addition to six small-format plates he has rendered a vignette of a mask for the titlepage.