Guide des voyages aériens. Paris–Tunis by Louise FAURE-FAVIER (Signed)
FAURE-FAVIER, Louise. Guide des voyages aériens. Paris–Tunis. Paris–Lyon–Marseille–Ajaccio–Tunis. Tunis–Bône et Lyon–Genève. [Paris,] 1930. Guide officiel avec une grande carte en couleurs. Préface de M. Laurent Eynac.
Official aviation guide by Louise Faure-Favier (1870–1961), French aviator, journalist (perhaps the first Frenchwoman to do so professionally), poet and novelist. Faure-Favier was a leading figure at the dawn of commercial aviation, setting several speed records, the first of which, in 1919, for Paris to Dakar, and another for a round trip between Paris and Baghdad in 1930. From 1921, she developed and published a series of the first official French aviation guidebooks covering destinations such as London, Tunis and Lausanne, illustrated, as here, with aerial photographs she took herself.
Faure-Favier was also an influential journalist, who wrote about aviation and air travel, art, culture, and feminism. She was part of the French artistic avant-garde, her friends included Guillaume Apollinaire, Marie Laurencin, Erik Satie, Picasso and Cocteau.
131, [1], xxviii [Adverts] pp; with 4 leaves of photographic plates, printed double-sided, and a folding colour-printed map pasted to the inside rear cover; other illustrations/maps in the text; 8vo (183 × 133 mm), original illustrated card wrappers, a little discoloured with a couple of chips, spine chipped in places, tear to lower joint at head. Some marginal browning to pages. A very good copy.