Le roi du timbre-poste
A French novel of 1898 published in Paris by Hachette, written by Gérard de Beauregard and Henry de Gorsse, and illustrated with small pen-and-ink sketches set on blank cream pages. The pictures show a couple in formal dress, a top-hatted gentleman with a cane, a man in a cap reading a newspaper, and an interior scene with a woman searching a desk, captioned in French. A designer might take from them the loose, vignette-style drawing with open white margins and the period fashion of the 1890s.
