Cycling/ Adventure/ Froment/ Pontet. These "Merveilleuses Av - Lot 113

Cycling/ Adventure/ Froment/ Pontet. These "Merveilleuses Aventures d'un Véloceman" by Léon Pontet (author) and Charles Froment (composition and drawings) published in 1894 by the Bibliothèque Humoristique de la rue Hautefeuille (in4°, 31x21.5, 192pages, in their blue publisher's cover, rarer than the red one) are well worth the detour, and preferably by bicycle. Indeed, it's perhaps the most beautiful declaration of love to the nascent velocipede, as the Cévenol Charles Flament (1854-1924) gives Pontet's deliriums wings that the great Robida would not have disavowed. In short, it's a four-handed success, which in the fumes of coffee (see the fine analysis by Le Cahain and Mounier) takes us away from a lunch with three cycling buddies in Chaville, to an island where velocipedy is so reigning that its inhabitants are the Vélocéaniens, and the machines sometimes cyclopompes, sometimes venticycles !!!! Gaston de Pawlowski was 20 at the time, and his voyage into the 4th dimension was not published until 1912. Swift's Gulliver's Travels to Lilliput and Laputa date from 1726, and Pontet must not have been watertight, but we pedal like mad, hello Monsieur Bosch. The hunter and the fisherman are overwhelmed by the dreamy, whimsical, inventive and eco-friendly cyclist that is Cacalaz. This work will be 130 years old next year, and yet it's still glaringly topical. As the cover proclaims, on a good machine, the sun always has an appointment with the moon. A fine copy, with superbly rebound endpapers.