[Rarebooks] fa: CARDINAL DE RETZ - LA CONJURATION DU COMTE JEAN-LOUIS DE FIESQUE 1665

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, September 17. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/y9yw4vr7

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[Jean François Paul de Gondi, cardinal de Retz:] La Conjuration du comte Jean-Louis de Fiesque. Paris: Claude Barbin, sur le grand Perron de la Sainte Chapelle, MDCLXV [1665]. FIRST EDITION. Tall 12mo (15 cm) in full mottled calf with gilt-tooled spine and fore-edges, modern spine labels lettered in gilt, front and rear covers with armorial devices tooled in blind; [4] + 208 pp.

An adaptation and reinterpretation rather than a translation of Agostino Mascardi's La congiura del conte Gio. Luigi de' Fieschi (1629). De Gondi's first written work, the Conjuration used the Fieschi conspiracy of 1547 against Andrea Doria in Genoa as a means to hint at radical, even revolutionary principles, and it was highly controversial in its time, described by critics as a "catechisme revolutionnaire" and a "manuel du parfait conspirateur." Cardinal Richelieu observed: "voila un dangereux esprit."

Binding with bumping to the corners, modest rubbing to the edges and joints; leaves with a very few occasional small spots; unidentifiable early owner's signature to the title page, dated 1692, and ink annotations to the endpaper opposite; he has also added an ink notation to the margin on one page and underlined a few lines of text on another; else the contents are very clean and crisp, firmly bound. Front paste-down with the later armorial bookplate of William Stirling.