Arthur Zaidenberg’s Masereel-like renderings of Decadent icon Des Esseintes appear here for the second time courtesy of a recent upload at the Internet Archive. Zaidenberg’s illustrations were for a 1931 edition of Huysmans’ novel, and the copies I linked to back in 2008 were rather fuzzy and low-res compared to these scans. The earlier collection does, however, include an additional illustration not present in the Internet Archive copy, possibly the result of the plate theft that plagues old illustrated volumes. The 1931 edition isn’t the best illustrated À Rebours by any means—the illustrations aren’t even on a par with Zaidenberg’s other work—but this is one cult novel whose treatment in any medium is liable to attract my attention.
