WITH EIGHT ORIGINAL ETCHINGS SIGNED BY ALOIS KOLB

VON SCHOLZ, Wilhelm Franz Johannes. Charlotte Donc, mit Acht Radierungen von Alois Kolb. Berlin: Eigenbrödler-Verlag, circa 1928. Slim quarto, original green velvet gilt, original dust jacket. $650.

Signed limited edition, an unnumbered copy of 550 in total, of this “extraordinary collection of circumstances,” signed by both author and illustrator, with additional etched title page and seven full-page etchings, all signed in pencil by Kolb.

The story of Charlotte Donc "is perhaps one of the most romantic histories that the various occurrences of human life ever produced. Tho' several fictions have been founded on events similar to what is here related, fiction itself has hardly been able to produce a more extraordinary collection of circumstances" (François Gayot de Pitaval). This is von Scholz' rendition of the 18th-century real-life misadventures of Charlotte Donc, who purportedly avoided her estranged husband's pursuit by disguising herself as a man— the "Chevalier de Morsan." "The exact truth in the narrative has never been absolutely ascertained, although a court of law once passed upon the facts… that the person under the name of the Chevalier de Morsan, was not a woman; and certainly not Charlotte Donc, the wife of Robert" (New York Times). The illustrator of this elegant limited edition, Alois Kolb, onetime professor of graphic design at Leipzig's Grafische Akademie, is known particularly as an etcher and frequent artistic contributor to Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst and Jugend. After the First World War, in which he served in the Austrian army, Kolb concentrated largely on book illustration. Text in German.

A fine doubly-signed copy, with only a horizontal crease to center of original dust jacket.