Illustrated by Frank C. Papé

By France, Anatole

London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1925. First Illustrated Edition. Royal octavo – 24.6 cm. (xxii), 345 pp., [2] publisher’s advertisements. 12 black-and-white finely engraved plates, illustrated endpapers front and rear, with the superbly illustrated chapter tailpieces and drop-caps by Frank C. Papé. Publisher’s black cloth with bright gilt decorations and lettering on front cover and spine, black dust jacket with red lettering and decoration. A scarce copy in Fine condition — tight un-cracked hinges, no prior ownership markings — a crisp copy.

Penguin Island is a satirical and fictional history by Nobel Prize winning French author Anatole France. It is written in the style of a sprawling 18th- and 19th-Century history book, concerned with grand metanarratives, mythologizing heroes, hagiography and romantic nationalism. The story is about a fictitious island, inhabited by great auks (penguins). History begins when a wayward Christian missionary monk lands on the island and perceives the upright, unafraid auks as a sort of pre-Christian society of noble pagans. Mostly blind and somewhat deaf, having mistaken the animals for humans, he baptizes them. This causes a problem for The Lord, who normally only allows humans to be baptized. After consulting with saints and theologians in Heaven, He resolves the dilemma by converting the baptized birds to humans with only a few physical traces of their ornithological origin, and giving them each a soul.

$250.00 -