[Rarebooks] fa: MEMOIRES SECRETS DE LA COUR DE FRANCE 1733 - Armorial Bindings of le Comte de Choiseul-Beaupre

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, March 13. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/hclk5bn

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain

[Louis Rustaing de Saint-Jory:] Memoires Secrets de la Cour de France. Contenant les Intrigues du Cabinet, pendant la Minorite de Louis XIV. Amsterdam: chez François Girardi, 1733. First edition. Three volumes, 12mo (16.5 cm), in early/period mottled calf with arms tooled in gilt on all front and rear covers, marbled endpapers, page edges dyed red; Barbier-Brunet III, 252.

An uncommon example of the "secret memoirs" genre popular in the eighteenth-century, this work deals with the court intrigues surrounding the young Louis XIV during the years 1647-1651. Since the author  required three volumes to cover only four years of the young king's life, you know they must be full of juicy tidbits. Rustaing de Saint-Jory (16??-1752) was the author of several other works of a similar nature, including Les galanteries angloises (1700) and Les femmes militaires: relation historique d'une isle nouvellement decouverte (1735).

From the library of Claude-Antoine-Cleriadus de Choiseul-Beaupre (1733-1794), with his arms tooled in gilt on front and rear covers. The ancient and noble Choiseul family were prominent in French military and political affairs throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Choiseul-Beaupre was no exception: lieutenant general des provinces de Champagne et de Brie (1755), marechal de camp (1763), inspecteur general de la cavalerie (1764), commandant en second en Lorraine (1776), gouverneur de Champagne et de Brie (1781), commandant des bailliages de Vitry et Chaumont (1787), and a member of the last Assembly of Notables (1787). Arrested during the Terror, he was guillotined on May 4, 1794. A man of culture as well as military affairs, "il avait reuni une bibliotheque importante et un cabinet de curiosites" (Oliver and Hermal, Manuel de l'amateur de reliures armoriees françaises).