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  1. ERNST, Max.

    Une Semaine de Bonté ou les sept éléments capitaux. Roman. Premier [–Dernier] Cahier …

    Paris, Éditions Jeanne Bucher, 1934.

    First edition, no. 706 of 800 copies on papier Navarre from a total edition of 816.

    £4500

  2. GIUSTI, Paolo Emilio.

    Magie. Preface de Jean Royère.

    Paris, Albert Messein, 1938.

    First edition of a rare work of verse and prose poetry; a presentation copy from the author ‘à son Eminence le Cardinal Mercier; hommage humble et respectueux d’un catholique italien; Paolo Giusti / Paris, Janvier 1938’.

    £350

  3. GOGOL’, Nikolai Vasil’evich, and Louis VIARDOT (translator).

    Tarass Boulba… traduit du russe par Louis Viardot.

    Paris, Librairie de L. Hachette et Cie, 1853.

    First separate appearance of Gogol’s story in the French translation by Louis Viardot, with an introduction by Turgenev, published in the series ‘Bibliothèque des chemins de fer’.

    £250

  4. GOSSELIN, Charles-Robert. 

    Plan d’éducation, en réponse aux académies de Marseille et de Châlons, dont l’une a proposé...

    Amsterdam, 1785. 

    A most interesting sammelband of three rare French works on education from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
     
    In the first work, Charles-Robert Gosselin (1740–1820) advocates a radical overhaul of the existing system of education in France through the destruction...

    £875

  5. HUGO, Victor.

    Notre-Dame de Paris. Par Victor Hugo. Troisième edition … Tome premier [– deuxième].

    Paris, Charles Gosselin, 1831.

    First edition, third issue, of Victor Hugo’s great historical novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, one of 275 copies printed.

    £7500

  6. [KRÜDENER, Barbara Juliane de Vietinghoff, Baronne de.]

    Valérie, ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernest de G… Tome...

    Paris, Henrichs, 1804.

    Rare first edition of Valérie, the most famous novel by the Russian mystic and novelist Madame de Krüdener (1766–1824), who for a time exerted an influence over Tsar Alexander I.

    £800

  7. LA SALLE, Jean-Baptiste, Saint. 

    Les règles de la bienséance et de la civilité chrétienne, divisées en deux parties. 

    Rheims, Le Batard [– Barbier], 1808. 

    Rare edition of La Salle’s pedagogical work, printed in civilité type and bound in printed and manuscript waste.  The Règles of St Jean-Baptiste La Salle (1651–1719) first appeared in 1702 and, an immediate success, were reprinted innumerable times until well into the nineteenth...

    £750

  8. LE CLERC, Sébastien, the Elder. 

    Figures de la passion D. N. S. Iesus Christ presentées à Madame Madame de Maintenon, par...

    Paris, chez G. Audran graveur ordinaire du Roy, [early 1700s]. 

    Scarce later issue of this wonderful suite of engravings depicting the Passion of Christ by the noted engraver Sébastien Le Clerc (1637–1714), running from Christ’s arrival in the Garden of Olives to the Holy Spirit descending upon the Apostles. 

    £675

  9. LE MIRE, Aubert (editor). 

    Rerum toto orbe gestarum chronica a Christo nato ad nostra usque tempora.  Auctoribus Eusebio...

    Antwerp, apud Hieronymum Verdussium, 1608. 

    First edition of this collection of chronicles, covering sixteen hundred years of world history from the birth of Christ to its publication, composed by the ecclesiastical historian Aubert le Mire of Brussels, this copy from the library of Jacques Auguste de Thou. 

    £3750

  10. [LOO, Pieter van, (attributed).] 

    156 watercolours of flowers, plants, and fruits. 

    [Holland, c. 1760–80]. 

    A truly stunning collection of over 150 original eighteenth-century botanical watercolours, attributed to the noted Dutch botanical artist Pieter van Loo (1731–1784). 

    £110000

  11. [LOQUET, Marie-Françoise].

    Voyage de Sophie et d’Eulalie, au Palais du vrai bonheur; ouvrage pour servir de guide dans les voies...

    Paris, Charles-Pierre Berton, 1781.

    First edition of this rare utopian voyage written by a woman for a readership of women.

    £1500

  12. MATTHIEU, Pierre, et al.

    Tablettes ou quatrains de la vie et de la mort. Par Pierre Matthieu, conseiller du roy.

    Première [– troisième] partie … Rouen, Jacques Cailloué, 1628.

    Very rare pocket-sized Rouen edition of verses on life and death by the poet and royal historiographer Pierre Matthieu (1563–1621), here printed with further poems by Guy du Faur de Pibrac, Antoine Favre and others. All early editions are extremely rare, many known in a single copy.

    £3000

  13. MÉRIMÉE, Prosper.

    La Chambre bleue. Nouvelle dédiée à Madame de la Rhune.

    Brussels, Librairie de la Place de la Monnaie, 1872.

    Very rare first procurable edition of Mérimée’s novella La Chambre bleue, one of 129 copies printed. The first edition (‘Biarritz, 1866’ = Paris, Jules Claye, 1871) was published in only three copies.

    £750

  14. MESHCHERSKY, Elim Petrovich, Prince.

    Les roses noires par le prince Élim Mestscherskï.

    Paris, Amyot, 1845.

    First edition of this posthumous collection, which includes a short dramatisation of Pushkin’s The Gypsies, ‘un charmant poëme d’Alexandre Pouschkinn, le grand écrivain que pleure la Russie’.

    £600

  15. MILHAUD, Darius.

    Le boeuf sur le toit, ou The nothing doing bar. Farce imaginée et réglée par Jean Cocteau – costumes de G....

    Paris, Editions de la Sirène, 1920.

    First edition of Milhaud’s Le boeuf sur le toit, Op. 58 (The ox on the roof, or The nothing-doing bar), a surrealist ballet-farce which became extremely popular in 1920s Paris.

    £2400

  16. [PALLAVICINO, Ferrante.]

    La rettorica delle puttane. Composta conforme li precetti di Cipriano. Dedicata alla università delle...

    ‘Cambrai’ (but Venice), [no printer], 1642.

    Extremely rare first edition, fourth variant (variant ‘V’), of a classic of seventeenth-century erotic literature, the masterpiece of the celebrated satirist Ferrante Pallavicino (1615–1644). Published anonymously in Venice with a fictitious Cambrai imprint, The rhetoric of whores...

    £5500

  17. PASTEUR, Louis. 

    Études sur la bière, ses maladies, causes qui les provoquent, procédé pour la rendre inaltérable, avec une...

    Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1876.

    First edition.  In his Études sur la bière, Pasteur ‘described a new and perfected method of preparing pure yeast [and] emphasized that yeast occasionally required small quantities of oxygen in order to retain its “youth” and its capacity to germinate in oxygen-free environments. ...

    £750

  18. ROUVEYRE, André.

    Two typescript drafts of Apollinaire (1952), here titled ‘Stature d’Apollinaire. Gravures de Henri Matisse’,

    c. 1950.

    ROUVEYRE, André, and Henri MATISSE. Apollinaire. Paris, Raisons d’Etre, 1952 [1953].

    £6500

  19. [SOUZA, Adélaïde de.]

    Charles et Marie. Par l’auteur d’Adèle de Senange.

    Paris, Maradan, 1802.

    First edition of this novel describing British society at the beginning of the nineteenth century, written in the form of an aristocratic young Englishman’s diary.

    £400

  20. VIAS, Balthasar de.

    In clarissimum virum Nicolaum Claudium Fabricium de Peiresc ... Epicedion.

    Marseille, Claude Garcin, 1642.

    Uncommon first edition of Balthasar de Vias’s elegant neo-Latin elegy commemorating the life of his friend the scholar, antiquary, and collector Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637) of Aix-en-Provence, the most learned man of his time; our copy contains the extremely rare ‘Encomiasticon’...

    £3250