[Rarebooks] fa: MARQUIS DE LA FARE - MEMOIRES ET REFLEXIONS sur le REGNE DE LOUIS XIV - 1749

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, February 21. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/znfbceo

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain

[Charles-Auguste La Fare, marquis de:] Memoires et Reflexions sur les Principaux Evenemens du Regne de Louis XIV. Et sur le caractere de ceux qui y ont eu la principale part. Par M.L.M.D.L.F. Nouvelle édition, où l'on a ajoûté quelques Remarques. Amsterdam, chez J.F. Bernard, 1749. Bound in full early/period morocco with gilt-tooled borders and spine decorations, page edges gilt; 12mo (16.5 cm); [2], 344 pp.

Very light rubbing and wear to the binding; author's name noted on the title-page by an early owner; slight toning to the top edge of the text block, a few occasional small spots to the leaves; otherwise very clean  and fresh, firmly bound. Engraved armorial bookplate of noted nineteenth-century book collector P. Guy Pellion (see Catalogue des livres rares et précieux composant la bibliothèque de M. P. Guy Pellion, 1888); later bookplate of Ross Ambler Curran, early twentieth-century West Coast society figure and bibliophile.

Charles-Auguste de la Fare (1644-1712), poet, librettist and lover of pleasure and women, was also a soldier of distinction, serving with the Maréchal de Turenne in several of Louis XIV's innumerable wars before an ill-advised love affair with the mistress of the Secretary of War led to the end of his military career. His Memoires et Reflexions, first published in 1715 and here augmented with "quelques remarques," have been described as "precise and full of finesse" (Wikipedia).