[Rarebooks] fa: THREE FRENCH WORKS from LORD BERNERS' Library at Faringdon House

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, October 11. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/y2u33wdl

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Ernest Renan: Dialogues et Fragments Philosophiques. Paris: Levy, 1876. FIRST EDITION, 8vo (23 cm), in early/period morocco-backed marbled boards; [4], xxi, [3], 334, [2] pp. Binding with some light rubbing, top corner of front board worn away; contents with scattered foxing throughout as usual. Lord Berners' copy, from his library at Faringdon House, with his characteristically bold ms. "Please return to" notice on the front free-endpaper, and other occasional penciled notes and marks in his hand. Gerald Tyrwhitt, the 14th baron Berners, better known as Lord Berners (1883-1950), was a gifted amateur composer, talented novelist, serious aesthete and notorious eccentric, a Wodehousian character with a louche Dada-ist twist, whose circle of intimates included Igor Stravinsky, Serge Diaghilev, George Balanchine, Max Beerbohm, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali, Cecil Beaton, Evelyn Waugh, H.G. Wells, Isaiah Berlin, Patrick Leigh Fermor, the Sitwells, the Mitfords, and seemingly every other culturally significant figure of the first half of the twentieth century. His country estate, Faringdon, was for years the scene of an almost continuous, riotous house party, until World War II came along and spoiled everything.

Honore de Balzac: La Grenadiere. Six compositions dessinees et gravees a l'eau-forte par Ad. Lalauze... Avant-propos de Georges Vicaire. Paris: Henri Leclerc, 1901. First edition thus, limited to 300 numbered copies, this being no. 247. Slim 8vo (20.5 cm) in three-quarter morocco and marbled boards (by Jirak of Vienna), marbled endpapers, top page edges gilt; [4], 50, [2] pp.; etchings, original printed wraps bound in. With six handsome etchings by Adolphe Lalauze (three full-page with tissue guards, one frontispiece, and two in-text vignettes). Binding with sunning to the spine, some light rubbing and wear to the edges, the contents very clean and fresh. From the library of Lord Berners, with his distinctive pencilled ownership inscription on the front fly-leaf. 

La Fontaine: Contes et Nouvelles... Nombreuses illustrations de Fragonard, Lancret, Boucher, Oudry, etc. Paris: Librairie Illustree, [n.d., but ca. 1903]. Tall 8vo (24.5) bound in three-quarter morocco (by Blackwell, Oxford); 471 pp., illustrated. Spine sunned, toning to the leaves with a few occasional small spots. From Lord Berners' library at Faringdon House, with his distinctive bold signature to the title-page.