Mes Rêveries. Almanach chantant pour l’année 1810. Janet, Libraire et Md. de Musique, Rue Saint-Jacques, No. 9 Paris. [1809].

64mo. Additional engraved pictorial title-page, typographic title-page, 24 pages of text in French (printed calendar and astronomical data, including 2 unnumbered pages at the rear), 12 full-page copper-engraved plates, each faced by two-page letterpress song sheet with lyrics and matching decorative borders (24 engraved pages total). Provenance: beautiful engraved exlibris for  "F. Meunié" on the fly-leaf. 67 x 45 mm. Beautifully preserved matching contemporary French straight-grained ochre morocco. Boards framed with an elegant scrolling gilt border (roulette dorée) in the neoclassical Empire style all edges gilt. Housed in its original, matching straight-grained ochre morocco pull-off slipcase, identically decorated with the same scrolling gilt border. Minor, superficial rubbing to the corners of the slipcase, otherwise an exceptionally bright, unsunned, and fine copy. Not in bondy, nor Spielmann, nor Welsh. Grand-Carteret, 1574.  WorldCat locates no copies worldwide.  A stunning, complete example of a luxury French Empire pocket almanac (étrennes). Janet was the preeminent Parisian publisher of these tiny, highly crafted pocket-books, which were designed as fashionable New Year’s gifts for the elite. The 12 narrative plates capture contemporary themes of love, courtship, and theater, rendering it a perfect capsule of Napoleonic social tastes. Complete copies retaining their original, uniformly dyed ochre leather slipcases are of considerable scarcity on the market today.