[METTRAY]. Colonie agricole et pénitentiaire de Mettray. [Pa - Lot 303

[METTRAY]. Colonie agricole et pénitentiaire de Mettray. [Paris], Imprimerie de Lemercier, s.d. [1844]. Album in-4 oblong, beige half-percaline, boards covered with red chagrined paper, gilt title on first board (Publisher's boards). Rare first edition of this album of 21 lithographs with tinted background, including a title-frontispiece, engraved after compositions by A. Thierry, the architect of Mettray. The plates show the daily life of children and adolescents in the Colonie de Mettray, the famous penal institution founded in 1839 by Frédéric-Auguste Demetz. This is the main iconographic source for this prison establishment. Over the course of a century (1839-1937), it attempted to reform more than 17,000 "delinquents" aged from 6 to 21. [...] Nestled in the heart of the Touraine region, this "moralization through work on the land" project, a wall-less institution with the look of a flower garden, gave substance to a philanthropist's dream: to rescue little "guilty innocents" from the fetid world of prisons. The Colony invents its own values, rules and legends, largely in response to the expectations of a society always eager to control the individual. But the good example quickly turned into a veritable children's prison. Punishment, vexation and back-breaking work were the daily lot of the little colonists at Mettray (cf. Forlivesi, Pottier and Chassat, Éduquer et punir. La colonie agricole et pénitentiaire de Mettray, 2015). Rare complete copy, with the proof of the Vue générale de la colonie which is colored, in which has been added a lithograph by Champin after Courteilles, printed by Rigo and captioned Vue d'une partie de la colonie, as well as a large original photograph showing the entire colony in rows. Some foxing, added plate browned. Play in binding, inner hinges detached.