Cartography - Lot 400

Cartography WALLON (Paul Édouard) Map of the Pyrenees including both sides of the Massif Central from Navarre to the Aure valley. Metric scale 1/150.000e. Engraved by R. HAUSERMANN. Paris, imp. Lemercier; Pau, Cauterets, Cazaux, sd. (1883). Captioned sheet (630x890mm), engraved and printed in color with relief curve (some foxing, cloth used with tears at folds). Folded to in-8 format. Some city names underlined or framed in red ink. "Wallon began his aims in 1874 and continued them until 1882". According to Massie, the original is from 1883, which can be doubted by reading Adolphe Joanne's preface in the 4th edition of the 1874 Guide Joanne (p. XV): "M. WALLON, from Montauban, has been kind enough to write down, especially for me, the main climbs he has undertaken over the last twenty years, in response to his ever-renewed passion for the most inaccessible peaks of the Hautes-Pyrénées and Haute-Garonne, and the composition of these remarkable chromolithographic panoramas and detailed maps which he is publishing or will publish shortly...". Massie is evasive when it comes to publishing details. He places the original in 1883, reissued in 1908 without date. We have compared them: they are perfectly identical, but the second edition, printed by Lemercier with the words "2ème édition revue et complétée" in the upper left margin, was certainly published before 1900. An undated third edition with the publisher's name and the indication "Cazaux, libraire éditeur, Thalabot successeur". This 3rd edition could be from 1908 (and perhaps even under the aegis of Meillon, who published his Esquisses Toponymique with Thalabot in 1908). Massie does not mention the one with the indication: "3ème édition Paris, imp. Monrocq ; Cauterets, Cazaux, Luche succr.". The Caillau-Lamicq copy of the latter had no edition number. The first 2 can also be recognized by their folded format, the second being narrower and taller, and also by the engraving, the relief on the first being much more pronounced and prominent than on the second. Ours has a cardboard insert, but we've never come across one for the second or subsequent editions. Read the interesting, well-documented article (except for the bibliography) on Wikipedia.