21
ESTIENNE’S ‘BELLE éDITION’ IN A FINE FRENCH MOROCCO BINDING FROM THE LIBRARY OF J.F.P. L FèVRE DE CAUMARTIN, BISHOP OF BLOIS
83. ESTIENNE, Henri, II (editor). Anthologia diaphoron epigrammaton palaion [graecè] ... Florilegium diversorum epigrammatum veterum, in septem libros divisum, magno epigrammatu[m] numero & duobus indicibus auctu[m]. [Geneva]: Henri Estienne, 1566.
£2,995
8vo. Late 17th-/early 18th-century French red morocco gilt, boards with borders of double gilt fillets, central gilt arms of J.F.P. Le Fèvre de Caumartin, roll-tooled gilt board-edges and turn-ins, spine gilt in compartments, lettered in one, marbled endpapers, edges gilt over marbling; pp. [4 (title, explanation of editorial conventions, address to the reader, contents of first book)], 539, [35 (indices, errata, annotations, to the reader)], greek and roman types; woodcut publisher’s device on title [Schrieber 10]; slightly rubbed and scuffed, spine slightly darkened, some variable light browning or spotting and occasional light marking, washed, early marginal repairs on title, nonetheless a fresh, clean copy; provenance: faint, early manuscript annotations in Greek and Latin; Jean François Paul Le Fèvre de Caumartin (1668-1732, arms on boards, cf. Olivier 652, fer 4 for a reduced version; not traced in the catalogue of his sale on 10 January 1735); from the library of the Baronets Fitzherbert, Tissington Hall, Derbyshire.
First Estienne edition. Described by Brunet as a ‘belle édition qui présente un texte entièrement revu’, Estienne’s Anthologia was based on Maximus Planudes’ popular 14th-century abridgement of Constantine Cephalas’ collection of epigrams, and ‘provided a much better text than any of its predecessors’ (Schreiber). As The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature notes, the Greek anthology ‘contains over six thousand epigrams, many of them poems of great charm, ranging in time over seventeen centuries, from the 7th c. B.C. to the 10th c. A.D., and over a great variety of subjects. There are epitaphs (including the famous epitaphs attributed to Simonides), dedications, reflections on life and death and fate, poems on love, on family life, on great poets and artists and their works, and on the beauties of nature. A certain proportion are humorous or satirical, making fun of doctors, rhetoricians, athletes, &c. or of personal peculiarities, such as Nicon’s long nose’ (Oxford: 1986, p. 30). Schreiber further notes that, ‘For this edition Henri devised a system of diacritical marks “peculiar to himself” (“notae sibi peculiares”) to denote various classes of proper nouns: e.g. persons and famous animals, nations and cities, mountains, and bodies of water; he also employs in the margins the symbol of the hand with pointing finger to draw attention to gnomic expressions in the text — this was already used in the 1557 Aeschylus’.
This copy is notable for its fine late 17th-/early 18th-century morocco binding, presumably executed for J.F.P. Le Fèvre de Caumartin, whose arms it bears. Jean François Paul Le Fèvre de Caumartin was the son of Louis François Le Fèvre de Caumartin (1624-1687), conseiller au parlement de Paris and intendant de Champagne, and the younger brother of Louis Urbain Le Fèvre de Caumartin (1653-1720), seigneur de Caumartin, marquis de Saint- Ange, and comte de Moret. Louis Urbain was a notable bibliophile, who bequeathed to Jean François Paul a library ‘remarquable tant par le choix des ouvrages que par la beauté des reliures’ (Olivier 651). The cleric and scholar Jean François Paul became a Member of the Académie française in 1694, an honorary associate of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1701, and was appointed Bishop of Vannes in 1717 and then of Blois in 1719; as Olivier states, ‘Le Fèvre de Caumartin se passionna pour les livres; il enrichit la bibliothèque qui lui venait de sa famille en l’augmentant, entre autres acquisitions, de celle de son prédécesseur sur le siège de Blois, Nicolas Berthier’, and his library comprised some 9,000 printed books and 350 manuscripts at his death.
Adams A-1187; Brunet I, col. 308; Renouard, Estienne p. 126, no. 4; Schreiber 159.
84
84. EVANS, Edmund. The Illuminated Scripture Text Book with Interleaved Diary for Memoranda and a Coloured Illustration for Every Day. Frederick Warne & Co. 1880.
£298
75 x 110mm, in dark blue morocco backed ivory paper with brass edges and clasp, upper board elaborately decorated with gilt and blue borders with leaf curls enclosing the text in gilt green and red, with an embroidered silk panel of a forget-me-not. Pages with colour printed decorated biblical quotations for each day. A fine copy of a very pretty book.
Sixth edition, “New pictorial” edition “in every respect equal to its predecessors and in some points superior”. A choice example of Victorian colour printing by one of its leading exponents, Edmund Evans.
85
85. FAIRFAX PRESS. SITWELL, Sacheverell. Valse des Fleurs. A Day in St Petersburg and a Ball at the Winter Palace in 1868. York. The Fairfax Press. 1980.
£78
4to., original cloth backed paper covered boards lettered in gilt on spine. Endpapers and slipcase sides by Henry Moore, with two wood engraved devices by Reynolds Stone. A fine copy.
Limited edition of 400 numbered copies. This one of 340 quarter bound in cloth. First Edition thus. Sitwell’s extended series of variations on history, music, architecture and people of Tsarist Russia of 1868, focusing on the splendors of St. Petersburg, Tsarskoe Selo and Moscow.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92