Picasso: Forty Nine Lithographs; together with Honore Balzac's The Hidden Masterpiece

New York: Lear Publishers. Very Good+. 1947. Later Printing?. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [modest shelfwear to bottom edges of covers, bumped at base of spine, internally unblemished]. The Balzac story, printed on facing pages to the lithographs, is in two parts: "Gillette" and "Catherine Lescault." (From Wikipedia: "'Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu' (English: 'The Unknown Masterpiece') is a short story ... first published in the newspaper L'Artiste with the title 'Maître Frenhofer' (English: 'Master Frenhofer') in August 1831. It appeared again later in the same year under the title 'Catherine Lescault, conte fantastique.' It was published in Balzac's Études philosophiques in 1837 and was integrated into La Comédie humaine in 1846. ... [The story] is a reflection on art, and has had an important influence on modernist artists." (NOTE that the binding on this volume (see scanned image) does not match those described by other offered "first edition" copies, hence I'm surmising that this may be a later printing.) . (Inventory #: 29245)