[Rarebooks] fa: MEMOIRES de Messire PHILIPPE DE COMINES 1649 - Folio/Armorial Calf Binding

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, September 10. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/ybfh4kjp

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Denis Godefroy [ed.]: Les Memoires de Messire Philippe de Comines, seigneur d'Argenton. Contenans l'Histoire des Roys Louys XI. & Charles VIII. depuis l'an 1464 iusques en 1498. Reueus & corrigez sur divers Manuscrits, & anciennes Impressions. Augmentez de plusieurs Traictez, Contracts, Testaments, autres Actes, & de diuerses Obseruations. Par Denys Godefroy, Conseiller, & Historigraphe ordinaire du Roy. Paris: l'Imprimerie Royale, MDCXLIX [1649]. First edition thus. Tall folio (37.5 cm) in early/period speckled calf, front and rear covers with gilt-tooled arms of Luis de Benavides Carrillo de Toledo, Marqués de Caracena (1608-68); endpapers renewed; engraved vignettes and initials; two double-page genealogical tables; [58] + 572 + [14] pp. Brunet II -191 ("belle edition").

Binding with a few scattered stains and rubbing; bumping and wear to the spine and corners (two corners exposed); contents with scattered spotting and some intermittent toning (most noticeable on the first few leaves); else quite clean and sound, firmly bound. The book's original owner, Luis de Benavides Carrillo de Toledo, the third Marqués de Caracena, was a Spanish general and diplomat, governor of Milan from 1648 to 1656 and governor-general of the Spanish Netherlands from 1659 to 1664. (For identification of his coat of arms, see Andrés, Encuadernaciones Heráldicas de la Biblioteca Lázaro Galdiano, pages 204-34; also see British Museum, Collection online, no. 1983,U.5.)

A handsome production, considered one of the best of the early editions of these memoirs by Philippe de Comines (ca. 1447-1511), diplomat and advisor to the French kings Louis XI and Charles VII. Written with remarkable honesty, the Memoirs have long been regarded as a major primary source for the history of fifteenth-century Europe. They were translated into English in 1596 and later "inspired Sir Walter Scott's Quentin Durward (in which Commines[sic] himself figures). Commines was the first critical and philosophical historian since ancient times" (Oxford Companion to English Literature).