The Afternoon of a Faun presents a selection of over two hundred drawings created by the Spanish artist Francisco Bores (Madrid, 1898–Paris, 1972) for an edition of Stéphane Mallarmé 's celebrated poem L'Après-midi d'un faune , planned by E. Tériade in 1943 as one of the first installments of the "éditions de luxe" series from Verve, the publishing house he founded, which produced some of the most extraordinary artists' books of the 20th century. The work for that edition of Mallarmé's poem was in a very advanced stage of completion but was never finished. The preparatory drawings for this unfinished book of lithographs are now being shown for the first time and reveal a captivating mastery in the interpretation of a theme that stands out in his oeuvre.

This book, published to coincide with the exhibition of this invaluable previously unpublished work, is presented to readers as an imagined restoration of Mallarmé's poem illustrated by Bores. This printed recreation of a book that never came to fruition, in which Bores's drawings find their truest expression—that is, alongside Mallarmé's verses and in a complete sequence—is accompanied in this volume by a Spanish translation of the poem, prepared for this occasion by Amelia and Antonio Gamoneda, as well as a study by Professor and art critic Javier Arnaldo on this Tériade publishing project and on the drawings in the series.