Les fleurs animées

Volume 1

Volume 2

Grandville’s Les fleurs animées is considered a significant work in the art of French illustrated books. According to his biographer, it was Grandville’s favorite of his publications, embodying “poetic and gracious originality.” This book, albeit a satire and parody of the popular French flower book, is a collaboration of a writer, a botanist, and one visual artist, Grandville, on the general subject of botany and horticulture, concentrating on flowers. Grandville’s name is prominent on the title page, as he was more commercially successful by now and his name quite well known. The book exemplifies the “cult of flowers” and the pervasiveness of the flower motif in popular culture. The story begins with “The Fairy of the Flowers,” written by Delord, telling about how the Fairy of the Flowers freed flowers to rise above the ground to “live among people” in humanoid form, but still with some attributes of their original flower existence, such as shape and color. These flowers as women have many adventures and misadventures among people and speaking animals, such as insects and frogs. The stories are parables of good and bad behavior, of vices and virtues as found among humans. These stories, extremely fantastical, relate the adventures of specific flower-women, such as the rose, the violet, the camelia, the lily, the tea and coffee leaf, and the cactus flower. As the book states, “Flowers are the expression of society.”