The two volumes are bound together and Volume One is missing the title page and its verso, the copyright page. The marbled boards are rubbed, the gilt print on the spine faded and the head of the spine strip damaged; The back end paper and the back paste down are stained , possibly by smoke; both hinges have been reinforced with tape, which have stained the verso of the pages; there are illegible biro annotations on the front end paper as well as pencil scribbles, which appear infrequently throughout the book. Surprisingly these are not irritating. There is intermittent minor damp staining at the tail's hinge and an ink stain on page one of Volume One; page xxiii has 4 closed tears, none of which impact on the print. One tear has been repaired with clear tape, as have tears on pp. 155 - 158 in Volume Two; Also in Volume Two page 95 has not been cut properly by the printers and the edge overshoots the covers. Minor intermittent foxing throughout. Despite its faults, it remains an attractive copy: it's solid, clean and nice to handle. Volume I xxxiii and 271 pages including contents' page. Volume Two 262 pages and a contents' page. "... Ben-Lévi [pseud. Godchaux Weil, 1806-1878], who published a series of short stories in the Archives Israélites de France, the leading French Jewish newspaper, during the 1840s. One of the first Jews to write fiction in French, Ben-Lévi offers a portrait of a community caught between tradition and progress. Combining the "realist" literary codes of Balzac with the "idealist" codes of Sand, his stories hold up a critical mirror to the assimilating Jewish bourgeoisie of the era and show how a reformed Judaism could help resolve the dilemmas of modernity. Ben-Lévi's forgotten fictions reveal the agency and creativity of nineteenth-century French Jews in the face of momentous social change while also demonstrating the versatility of French literary models." (JSTOR)