[Rarebooks] Balzac's Physologie du mariage. Brussels, 1839. Green leather with marbled boards. $245

[Karen Cinquemani]

Happy Spring!

Just in time for the wedding season, we offer a lovely copy of  
Balzac's famous marriage manual with the bookplate of a somewhat  
interesting previous owner.

Pictures are here:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/126810113/balzacs-physologie-du-mariage-brussels?

Thank you, as always, for your interest and consideration.
Karen Cinquemani
H.A.S. Beane Books

[Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850] Physiologie du mariage, ou, Méditations  
de philosophie éclectique sur le bonheur et le malheur conjugal. Par  
De Balzac. Two volumes bound in one. Bruxelles: Société belge de  
librairie, 1839. Octodecimo 18mo. (6 1/4" x 4") 266 pp. & 274 pp.  
Period three-quarter bound in dark green polished calfskin leather  
with marbled boards. Dark brown spine label, gilt line bands and vine  
decoration in four panels.

Very Good condition. Sound, sturdy binding, bright & clean. Leather  
shows faint scratches, slight fade on spine. Light rub on marbled  
boards. Spine label faintly crazed with narrow darker black line along  
rear edge; Contents age-toned with light to moderate fox. Always  
legible -- tout en français bien sûr. Complete. Bookseller's old  
notation in pencil on front end paper "2 vols. in one. 2.50 [crossed  
out] 1.50"

Armorial bookplate of Charles Kent, Vicar of Ludford adhered to front  
paste down. {Rev. Kent married Henrietta Knight, daughter of John  
Knight of Henley Hall. Sadly, she died in February 1861 at Ludlow,  
Shropshire giving birth to their third child and only son, John Henry  
Kent, sole male heir to Henley Hall. Charles Kent, then 55 years of  
age, remarried one year after his first wife's death to Blanche  
Easton, aged 19. The Vicar had seven children with Blanche.....}

Balzac's marriage manual, often sardonic, written for husbands, but  
sympathic to their ladies, was first published anonymously by "a young  
bachelor" ("publiées par un jeune célibataire") in Paris in 1829. Its  
success was immediate, especially among women, and secured Balzac's  
literary career as he continued to publish novel after novel for the  
Etudes des M?urs (Study of Mores) to become known as his magnum opus  
La Comédie humaine.

A representative entry in the Catéchisme Conjugal is the following:  
"Un homme qui débute avec sa femme par un viol, est un homme perdu. Il  
ne sera jamais aimé." ("A man who begins by taking his wife by force  
is a lost man. He will never be loved.")

Our petite Belgian 1839 Physiologie du mariage, though one of many  
editions printed in the preceding decade, is found in only three  
libraries according to WorldCat. Balzac's manual of marital advice is  
rather scarce in nice condition, and, as one might readily see from  
the photos, this beautiful antiquarian volume would make a most  
desirable addition to the rare book collection of an admirer of Balzac  
and 19th century French literature.

$245 ppd. in U.S. At cost for elsewhere. Reciprocal trade.

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