New Orleans Characters

Presentation Copy

STREET CRIES OF NEW ORLEANS

FRÉMAUX, Leon J. (c.1820-1898).

New Orleans Characters.

[New Orleans:] Peychaud & Garcia, 1876.

Presentation Copy of this rare New Orleans Street Cries.

Inscribed on the title-page:

"A Monsieur Henri Grandjean Perrenaud avec le compliments de l'auteur. L. Frémaux."

"Costume books and illustrations of typical trades and occupations, so common in European color plate books, are comparatively rare in America. The book of New Orleans street characters may be the best example of the genre printed in the United States. It is not surprising that it was produced in the most European of American cities" (Stamped with a National Character).

The depictions include vendors of rice fritters, apples, ice cream; a chimney sweep; stock speculators and cotton and sugar dealers, etc. Spanish, Native, Black, and Anglo people are all variously depicted and Frémaux's bias is evident. Still, this work provides a rare glimpse at the dress, tools of the trade, and a sense of daily life in Reconstruction New Orleans. America Pictured to the Life 76; Bennett, p.44; Howes F-362 ("b"); Stamped with a National Character 93;

Folio (351 x 248 mm). Lithographed title with hand-colored oval vignette portrait, 16 hand-colored lithographed plates, most of the street vendors with captions in Creole and English. Original half roan over cloth, front cover gilt-lettered (leather well-worn, minor spotting/sunning to cloth). Custom cloth clamshell box.

Provenance: Henri Grandjean Perrenaud, 1821-1887, Swiss immigrant who soon settled in San Francisco (presentation inscription) – Hermann Hofer (bookplate) – Pacific Book Auctions, 25 May 2006, lot 59.