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Voyageuses

Paul [Charles Joseph] Bourget

This is the first of 11 novels with a dust jacket designed by Blampied in the Collection Nelson.

This is one of the few French novels that probably has the original dust jacket design and advertisements on the rear panel. It has the price written at the bottom by Blampied, 1f 25 NET, and it is printed on the spine. The shortage of paper and inflation meant that the price rose rapidly and almost quadrupled (see below). The advertisement on the rear panel of the first edition is to tell readers that they can send several books to soldiers at the front at low cost. In Britain people could send books free to soldiers at the front. The first edition also has a frontispiece of the same illustration on the cover but without lettering. This was dropped in later editions which have a rather crude purple square pasted over most of the price except for the two letters ET (see below).

Paul Bourget (English) (French) (1852-1935) was a French critic and novelist who was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Voyageuses (=travellers) was first published by Alphonse Lemerre in 1897.

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Full dust jacket of first edition (click to enlarge)

Full dust jacket of first edition with labels for a much higher price(click to enlarge)

Full dust jacket of a later edition, perhaps in the 1940s, with the original price obscured (click to enlarge)

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