Salomon Gessner, Idylles, Ornées de planches gravés sur bois par P.E. Vibert, Éditions Sonor S.A. 128pp. 11 x 9. Limited edition of 400 numbered copies printed on Hollande van Gelder paper. Thirty copies (11 to 40) have 29 wood engravings on China paper laid in and EACH SIGNED by the artist P.E. Vibert; this copy is #36. Bound in black morocco leather with gilt frame decoration on front and back, and gilt titles and decorations on spine. Four raised bands on spine. Gilt inside dentelles; marbled papers. Original 1922 softcover included in the binding. Intact silk ribbon. Top edge gilt.

A beautiful scarce, fine copy

Salomon Gessner (1 April 1730 – 2 March 1788) was a Swiss painter, graphic artist, government official, newspaper publisher and poet; best known in the latter instance for his Idylls. Gessner was the first imaginative writer in the German language to achieve international fame. The son of a bookseller in Zurich, and apprenticed to that trade, he took up drawing, and only later, as a sideline, began to write idylls, based on Theocritus and Virgil, in a heightened poetic prose. His Idylls of 1756 and his Old Testament epic Der Tod Abels of 1758 achieved widespread success. The appeal of his description of an uncorrupted pastoral bliss (his books were translated into no less than nineteen languages) must be seen in the context of the pervasive influence of the writings of another Swiss author, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and especially of the novel Julie ou la nouvelle Héloïse of 1761, which is set in a small town at the foot of the Alps. Rousseau was himself an admirer and correspondent of Gessner.

Pierre-Eugène Vibert born on February 16, 1875 in Carouge and died in the same town on January 1, 1937, was  a Swiss painter, designer, illustrator and engraver who shared his life betweenGeneva and Paris. Vibert created portraits and landscapes. He practiced woodcutting , created posters, fonts and illustrations. Most often he used a monochrome technique in engraving, that is to say in two colors. (Wikipedia)