[Rarebooks] fa: SCARRON - LE ROMAN COMIQUE - 3 vols. 1796 - First thus w/ LE BARBIER PLATES

[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

[Paul Scarron:] Le Roman Comique, par Scarron. Edition ornee de Figures dessinees par Le Barbier, et gravees sous sa direction. Paris: de l'Imprimerie de Didot jeune, chez Janet/Hubert, l'an IV [i.e.1796]. First edition thus. Three volumes, 8vo (21 cm), bound in full calf decorated in blind and gilt, all page edges gilt, marbled endpapers; 277, 252, 196 pp.; with the half-titles, portrait frontispiece, and 15 engraved plates (complete). Cohen-De Ricci 944.

A handsomely printed and illustrated edition of what is generally considered the chef-d'oeuvre of Paul Scarron (1610-1660), poet, comic dramatist and novelist, and the first husband of the woman who would later become famous as Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV's "secret" second wife. "This history of a  troupe of strolling actors... almost the first French novel... shows real power of painting manners and character, and is singularly vivid. It is in the style of the Spanish picaresque romance, and furnished Gautier with the idea and with some of the details of his Capitaine Fracasse." (Encyclopaedia Britannica, eleventh edition).