[Rarebooks] fa: MARGUERITE DE NAVARRE - NOUVELLES (HEPTAMERON) 1780-81 - Fine Plates/Bedford Bindings

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, February 7. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/hakjrxo

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain

Marguerite de Navarre: Les Nouvelles de Marguerite, Reine de Navarre [Heptameron Français]. Berne: chez Beat Louis Walthard/chez le Nouvelle Societe Typographique, 1780/1781. Three volumes, 8vo (19.5 cm), in full crimson morocco by Francis Bedford, elaborately gilt-tooled spines and turn-ins, pale blue moire silk endpapers, all page edges gilt; xlvii, [1], 275 pp.; [2], 308 pp.; [4], 250 pp.; half-titles in vols. I and II, engraved frontispieces, plates, vignettes, and tail-pieces. Cohen-De Ricci 680; Brunet III, p. 277.

First appearance of this lavishly and exquisitely illustrated edition, complete with 3 frontispieces, 73 plates, 72 vignettes and 72 end-pieces by Dunker and Freudeberg, engraved by Eichler, Guttenberg, Leroy, Thiebault, and others. Cohen-Ricci describes the illustrations thus: "les figures, quoique un peu raides, sont tres jolies et gravees avec une finesse remarquable." The different imprint on the first volume is not uncommon, again as per Cohen-Ricci: "On rencontre parfois ce tome avec l'adresse: Berne, Chez Beat Louis Walthard." A handsomely printed production in handsome French-style morocco bindings by Francis Bedford (1799-1883), with his mark in gilt on the front turn-in ("F. Bedford"). Occasional light rubbing and soiling, light wear to the joints and extremities, spines slightly sunned/darkened; contents with mild to occasionally moderate toning, scattered light foxing and offsetting, heaviest on the title-page of vol. II; else quite clean and fresh, firmly and beautifully bound. Front paste-downs with the engraved armorial bookplates of Ross Ambler Curran, early twentieth-century West Coast society figure and bibliophile. A lovely set.

Marguerite of Navarre (1492-1549), the enlightened sister of the enlightened French king Francis I, was renowned for her patronage of artists, writers and intellectuals, as well as for her own gifts in those fields. The author of numerous poems and plays, she was inspired by the Decameron of Boccaccio to write this collection of seventy-two short, often amusing and risque tales dealing with love, lust, infidelity, jealousy, and other romantic and sexual themes. The work is generally referred to as the Heptameron, and is so designated here on the half-titles and the spines of the volumes.