[Rarebooks] fa: DICTIONARIE of the FRENCH & ENGLISH TONGUES (Part 1) - 1611

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 16th & 17th-Century English titles,  
auctions ending Monday, March 21. More details and images can be found  
at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Many thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


[Randle Cotgrave: A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues.  
London: Adam Islip, 1611]. First edition. Part I only. Folio (29 cm)  
in modern marbled wraps; 10 pp.; woodcut head- and tail pieces and  
initials.
A fascinating, integral fragment of "one of the world's great books"  
and "the most important dictionary of the French Renaissance [and] a  
substantial contribution to the development of dictionary  
material" (Smalley, The Sources of a Dictionarie of the French and  
English Tongues, 1948). Lacking the prelominaries, but with the first  
part in its entirety, comprising: "Briefe Directions for such as  
desire to learne the French Tongue: Vowels, Consonants, Nownes,  
Adjectives, Verbes, Irregular Verbes, Adverbes, Conjunctions,  
Prepositions," etc. The last page bears the word "Finis" and a woodcut  
tail-piece, indicating that this 10-page section is complete in itself.

Printed 400 years ago, five years before Shakespeare's death and in  
the same year as the King James Bible, Cotgrave's Dictionarie was the  
first significant French-English dictionary, and only the second ever  
published. Leaves show some soiling and creases; wear, toning and dust- 
soiling to the edges; mild damp-stain to the margins of the last three  
leaves; otherwise clean and sound in modern marbled wraps.