LE PROCÈS DE L'ENFANT DU CRAPAUD - AFFAIRE CAMILLE LEMONNIER. Réquisitoire, Plaidoiries, Jugement, Documents. TRIBUNAL CORRECTIONNEL DE LA SEINE [Cour d'Assises].

TRIAL OF "L'ENFANT DU CRAPAUD" [THE TOAD'S CHILD] - THE CASE of CAMILLE LEMONNIER - The Indictment, Pleadings, Judgement, Documents. SEINE CRIMINAL COURT.

BRUSSELS: Ferdinand Larcier, 1888. First and Limited Edition, this being copy #25 of 250.

Hardcovers, the original softcover book has been beautifully bound into full grain leather covers, with five spine bands, gilt titling to the spine, 6.5x10 inches,125 pages. In a custom slipcase. TEXT IN FRENCH.

Illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of Camille Lemonnier, the Belgian author who was on trial for obscenity.

Laid-in is the personal card of EDMOND PICARD, on which he inscribed: "Heureuse année à mon bon frère".

CONDITION: The fine binding covers are in NEAR FINE condition, just a bit of wear at the folds, a beautiful fine binding. The original bound in volume complete with its wrappers are in GOOD condition, the wrappers are only fair, very toned, weary, and have professional repairs to the paper; the blank prelim page where Edmond Picard's inscribed card is now laid-in has tape ghosts where the card was once taped on to the page; the first few pages including the frontispiece are foxed; the rear wrapper is toned; there is a spot or mark here and there, otherwise the inner pages are very nice - tight, bright, clean, clear and unmarked. The INSCRIBED CARD by the noted defense attorney and author EDMOND PICARD has tape ghosts to its edges but remains bright and clear.

A beautifully bound work of a historic trial in the collective movement towards freedom of thought and words in literature. Too bad we're quickly on our way back to earlier, darker times.

About CAMILLE LEMONNIER (from Wikipedia):

******Antoine Louis Camille Lemonnier, b.1844 d.1913, was a Belgian writer, poet and journalist. He was a member of the Symbolist La Jeune Belgique group, but his best known works are realist. His first work was Salon de Bruxelles (1863), a collection of art criticism. His best known novel is Un Male (1881). He was a controversial author, some of his works were declared obscene.******

About the attorney EDMOND PICARD, noted Attorney, 5X Nobel Prize nominee, anti-semite and racist (from Wikipedia):

******Edmond Picard, b.1836 d.1924, was a Belgian jurist and writer. He was a leading theoretician of antisemitism and racism in Belgium, as well as a champion of Belgian nationalism through his notions of the "Belgian soul" and Belgian martyrdom in World War I. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.

He was a lawyer at the court of appeal and the Court of Cassation of Belgium. He was also head of the Belgian bar association, professor of law, playwright and journalist. Involved in politics, he was senator for the Belgian Labour Party.

Paul Verlaine was one of Edmond Picard's closest friends. When Verlaine went on trial for the attempted murder of Arthur Rimbaud, it was Edmond Picard who defended him. The author Camille Lemonnier was another of his friends. Edmond Picard defended him in his trial on obscenity charges.

Picard propagated virulent racism and antisemitism in his works, such as Synthèse de l'antisémitisme (1892, reprinted 1942) and En Congolie (1896). He interpreted human society and its conflicts through the prism of race, claiming that Jews are "parasitic" and that Black people are "imitators". On account of his extremism he has been compared with the proto fascist Édouard Drumont in France.****** (Good attorney, lousy human being.)