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I can't claim discovering this one - that would be the nice people at the OBI Scrapbook Blog. But yeah it's pretty fantastic. Even if you don't read French it's heavily illustrated; these images are only the tip of the iceberg des monstres. As far as I can tell it's never been translated into English and not even reprinted (except for those shoddy public domain print-on-demand companies).
The author was almost certainly the obscure painter Eugene Edmond Valton (1836-1910) who seems to have done mainly portraits and landscapes though I've found so little information about him that could easily be wrong. One database of French art museums only lists one work of his though I'm unclear how extensive the database is. His few other writings include a book (pamphlet?) on drawing, which he taught, and a memorial piece on Seurat.
