A Season in Hell.

[New York:] Limited Editions Club. 1986. 4to. Original red morocco, lettered in black to front cover and spine, in plushlined black cloth slipcase; pp. [6], xii, 87, [7], printed in parallel French and English on facing pages, with 8 photogravure plates by Mapplethorpe, loosely inserted tissue guards; minimal scratching to slipcase; a near-fine copy; signed by Mapplethorpe and Schmidt in pencil to colophon. First edition, limited to 1,000 copies, with photogravure illustrations by Robert Mapplethorpe, signed by the photographer and the translator, this copy unnumbered.Arthur Rimbaud's incendiary, hallucinogenic and groundbreaking prose poem is here presented in the original French alongside Paul Schmidt's English translation. In his introduction, Schmidt describes A Season in Hell as 'a work of adolescent passion - not the passion of exuberance, but passion as suffering', and retraces the desperate circumstances which produced this frenzy of artistic expression. It was originally self-published by Rimbaud in 1873 as Une Saison en Enfer. Published only three years before the photographer's death, this edition is illustrated by Robert Mapplethorpe's spectacular photogravures. Bringing together a selection of the photographer's self-portraiture, still lifes, and experimental double exposures.