In the year following the death of the French publisher Charles Furne (1794-1859), a record of his life was published by the noted historian Rosseeuw de Saint-Hilaire. To further honor Furne, a portrait photograph was printed and pasted to the frontispiece of each book. The prints may have been created by his son Charles Paul Furne, an early practitioner of photography.
Furne is best remembered for publishing a twenty-volume illustrated edition of La comédie humaine by Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) (Rare Books EX 3232.1842)