[Rarebooks] fa: JEAN DE LA BRUYERE - CARACTERES DE THEOPHRASTE 1747 - 4 vols. in Fine Bindings

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, March 21. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/yeola2dw

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[Jean de la Bruyere:] Les Caracteres de Theophraste, et la suite traduits du grec; avec les caracteres, ou les moeurs de ce siecle. Lyon: freres Bruyset [vol. III, Amsterdam: Jean Elzevir; vol. IV, Amsterdam: Changuion], 1747. Four volumes, small 8vo (17 cm), uniformly bound in full period deckled calf in the French style, with gilt-tooled spines and gilt-lettered morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers, page edges dyed red; engraved frontispiece, woodcut decorations and initials.

From the library of Minto Castle, seat of the Elliots, barons and subsequently earls of Minto, with the Minto shelving label on the front paste-downs and the title-pages bearing the signature of Robert Elliot (probably the brother of Gilbert, the first earl). Bindings with a few nicks and abrasions to the boards; contents with occasional mild toning and a few scattered small spots, otherwise exceptionally clean and fresh, firmly and handsomely bound.

An appealing example of La Bruyere's chef d'oeuvre, a classic portrait of the social mores of his time, first published in 1688. "The plan of the book is thoroughly original... The treatise of Theophrastus may have furnished the concept, but it gave little more... La Bruyere combined the peculiarities of the Montaigne Essais, of the Pensees and Maximes of which Pascal and La Rochefoucauld are the masters respectively, and lastly of that peculiar seventeenth-century product, the 'portrait' or elaborate literary picture of the personal and mental characteristics of an individual. The result was quite unlike anything that had been seen previously, and, it has not been exactly reproduced since, although the essay of Addison and Steele resembles it very closely" (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911).