Complete and unabridged, with 52 full-page plates by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Édouard Detaille and Paul-Louis Delance. A group of friends gather at a Normandy inn and tell each other stories over the fire, in the leisurely manner of a man who was an engineer, a painter and a writer at once. Smith built the Race Rock lighthouse and painted in watercolour between contracts. This edition binds 52 plates after Boudin, Monginot, Munch and Beauquesne, alongside eight illustrations restored and coloured for the first time.