Memoires du Geant

Mémoires du Géant... avec une introduction par M. Babinet. Paris: [Poupart Davyl et Cie. for] E. Dentu, 1864. Octavo. Pp. [i-xvi; I]-XX; [21-]439, [1 ]. Text in French, front blank, half-title, largely uncut. Publisher's pictorial wrappers (slight lean to spine, tear at edge of front cover, moderate creases, wear and soiling, moderate foxing to bulked edges and front and rear pages). 

First edition: a very good copy and quite scarce in original wrappers. Nadar, in addition to being the most famous French photographer of his time, was also a caricaturist, and an almost Warhol-esque character who relished his own celebrity. He had an enormous hot air balloon, Le Geant, which came with a gondola which included a photographic studio, a print room, two cabins, a storeroom, and a lavatory: the present work describes its brief but glorious career, but including the not-so glorious crash in Hanover, in 1863, that seriously injured his wife.