[Rarebooks] fa: MONTESQUIEU - LETTRES PERSANES - Cologne: 1721

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Happy New Year. Listed now, auction ending Sunday, January 10. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/zlvxr3y

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain

[Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu:] Lettres Persanes. Cologne: Pierre Marteau, 1721. Two volumes bound in one, as often; 12mo (16.5 cm) in early/period mottled calf with gilt-tooled spine decorations and morocco title piece, marbled endpapers; 172, 187, [1] pp.

First or early printing of Montesquieu's first major work, a satirical epistolary "novel" in which the letters of two fictional Persian travelers serve to convey the author's views on contemporary French culture, religion and politics. "This exceedingly successful work mocks the reign of Louis XIV, which had only recently ended; pokes fun at all social classes; discusses, in its allegorical story of the Troglodytes, the theories of Thomas Hobbes relating to the state of nature; continually compares Islam and Christianity;… satirizes Roman Catholic doctrine; and is infused throughout with a new spirit of vigorous, disrespectful, and iconoclastic criticism. The work’s anonymity was soon penetrated, and Montesquieu became famous" (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Rubbing to the boards and joints, corners worn; toning and occasional light spotting to the contents, a few leaves browned, a few small stains; vol. II bound in without a title-page (as issued?); two leaves in vol. II are bound out of order, but are present and the text is complete; contents generally clean, firmly bound. A solid copy. Neat early ink annotation to the front flyleaf identifies this as the "Edition à la sphère," presumably for the woodcut vignette on the title-page. Front paste-down with the engraved armorial bookplate of Ross Ambler Curran, early twentieth-century West Coast society figure and bibliophile.