[Rarebooks] fa: MINISTER OF STATE re. THE TRUE USE OF MODERN POLICY (according to Cardinal Richelieu) 1658

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, November 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/yxksmqxl

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[Jean de Silhon; Henry Herbert:] The Minister of State. Wherein is shewn, The true use of Modern Policy. By Monsieur de Silhon, Secretary to the late Cardinall Richelieu. Englished by H.H. London: Printed for H. Twyford, Tho. Dring, and J. Place, and are to be sold in Vine Court Middle Temple, at the George in Fleetstreet, and at Furnifalls Inne Gate in Holborne, 1658. First edition. Folio (28 cm) in full early/period goatskin ruled in blind and gilt, gilt-lettered morocco spine label; [12] + 184 pp.; woodcut head-pieces and initials. Not in Wing; ESTC R498236.

Binding with some scuffing, wear to the corners, loss to the leather at the spine foot and from an area of the rear board; text block a bit shaken but secure; contents with mild browning and scattered spots, intermittent damp-stain to the fore-edge margins.

First edition in English of Silhon's treatise on Richelieuvian realpolitik, in which he explains, among other things, the concept of "reason of state," whereby political necessity trumps ethics. Jean de Silhon (1596-1667) was a founding member of the Académie française. There were two issues of this title in the same year, the other with the imprint naming only Thos. Dring. This is by far the scarcer of the two: ESTC locates only one copy of this issue worldwide, at Oxford. Unlike Oxford's copy, this example has the two contents leaves bound in after the prefatory "advertisement," not at the end.