[Rarebooks] fa: MARMONTEL - LES INCAS, ou LA DESTRUCTION DE L'EMPIRE DU PEROU - 2 vols. 1777

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, February 28. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/hx2fmaj

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain

Jean-Francois Marmontel: Les Incas, ou La Destruction de l'Empire du Perou. Paris: chez Lacombe, 1777. First edition. Two volumes, 8vo (19.5 cm), in full straight-grained navy blue morocco, all page edges gilt;  [iii]-xii, 358, [2] pp.; [2], 380, [4] pp. Bound without half-title pages (if called for), but with the errata leaf at the end of vol. I and the approbation leaves at the end of vol. II; engraved frontispiece and 10 engraved plates after J. M. Moreau (complete). Sabin 44652; Cohen-De Ricci 690.

First edition, handsomely illustrated, of Marmontel's sympathetic if somewhat melodramatic account of the fall of the Incan Empire. Significant as an Enlightenment-era plea for tolerance, the work proved popular and went through numerous editions in several languages. Jean-Francois Marmontel (1723-1799), was a French historian, writer, librettist and prominent member of the Encyclopedistes. Bindings scuffed and rubbed with wear to the edges and corners; light spotting and browning to the title pages, toning to several plates, scattered light spotting to the fore-edges of the text block, otherwise the contents are exceptionally clean and fresh, firmly bound. Front paste-down with the engraved armorial bookplate of Ross Ambler Curran,  early twentieth-century West Coast society figure and bibliophile.