[Rarebooks] fa: MARMONTEL - BELISAIRE 1767 - First Edition in Handsome Period Binding

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, February 14. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/j9np5bp

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain

Jean-Francois Marmontel: Belisaire. Par M. Marmontel, de l'Academie Francoise. Paris: chez Merlin, 1767. FIRST EDITION. Short 8vo (19.5 cm) in full early/period crimson goatskin with gilt-tooled borders and spine decorations; all page edges gilt, marbled endpapers; [2], x, 340, [4] pp.; with the half-title page, approbation, and four engraved plates after designs by Gravelot (complete). Cohen-De Ricci 688.

First edition, early state of Marmontel's controversial retelling of the life of the Byzantine general Flavius Belisarius, with the latter part of the volume devoted to his "Fragmens de philosophie morale," followed by the Approbation leaves. The famous plea for religious tolerance in Chapter XV brought on the condemnation of the Sorbonne and the church, all but ensuring the book's success. Binding with light wear to the edges and extremities, creases to the spine, blemish to the front board, short (3 cm) crack to the leather at the foot of the rear joint; offsetting from the plates, contents mildly toned with scattered light foxing, else quite clean and fresh, firmly bound in an elegant period binding. Front paste-down with the engraved armorial bookplate of Ross Ambler Curran, early twentieth-century West Coast society figure and bibliophile.