8vo. 320pp, [8]. First edition, first impression, with the swiftly suppressed Orazi cover illustration. Original publisher's paper wraps in gilt and red, with the Orazi laid on. Contemporary publisher's catalogue bound in the rear, uncut. Les Crime des Riches is a series of vignettes that offer political commentary on the Crimes of the Rich (or the crimes of being rich), written at the height of the Belle Epoque era by writer and satirist Jean Lorrain.
Lorrain, Jean. Les Crime des Riches.
Jean Lorrain (Paul Alexandre Martin Duval, 1855 – 1906), was a prolific French poet, writer, dedicated Dandy, and adherent to the Symbolist school. Something of a socialite, he spent much of his time in the artistic and opulent circles of Montmartre.
Openly homosexual from his school days, his father insisted he adopt a pseudonym if he in turn would insist on becoming a poet, which he duly did - self-funding his first collection and later making a living from both his poetic works and his journalism. He wrote regular columns for various papers, including Le Courrier français, L'Événement, and L'Écho de Paris. Predominantly a chronicler of the literary, theatrical, and artistic worlds, he made countless enemies with his scathing commentary of high society figures, which he unflinchingly often compared with the supposedly seedier underbelly of Paris. Edmond de Goncourt wondered in 1895,
"What's Lorrain's dominant trait? Is it spite or a complete lack of tact?" As Sarah Bernhardt once wrote Lorrain, "inside the abominably depraved being that you are, there beats the heart of a great artist, a genuinely sensitive and tender heart." He was, in biographer Philippe Jullian's words, "truly, at the fin de siècle, Sodom's ambassador to Paris.
Manuel Orazi (1860 – 1934) was an Italian Art Nouveau artist and designer, who made vast contributions to illustration, advertising, and typographics, as well as political contributions to magazines, including the anarchist L’Assiette au Beurre. Among other works, Orazi illustrated the French edition of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, designed some of the first jewellery in the Maison Arnould, and the produced the 1900 World Fair Poster for Loie Fuller.
This cover by some-time anarchist Orazi was swiftly suppressed for its lewd design of an exposed, doll like figure being held up by an old, well-groomed man. It was replaced with an anthropomorphic monkey dedicated to vice - drinking, cigar smoking, eyeing up nearby cleavage.