Limited Edition, Beautifully Bound by Samblanx & Wexkesser
Princesse de Cleves. Preface par Anatole France. Un Portrait et Douze Compositions de Jules Garnier. Graves par A. Lamotte.
Paris: Librairie L. Conquet, 1889.
. La Princesse de Cleves. Preface par Anatole France. Un Portrait et Douze Compositions de Jules Garnier. Graves par A. Lamotte. Paris: Librairie L. Conquet, 1889.
Full Description:
LA FAYETTE, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne. SAMBLANX & WECKESSER, [binder]. La Princesse de Cleves. Preface par Anatole France. Un Portrait et Douze Compositions de Jules Garnier. Graves par A. Lamotte. Paris: Librairie L. Conquet, 1889.
Limited edition, one of 500 copies, this being number 449. Numbered and initialed by the publisher. Four parts in one octavo volume (8 1/16 x 5 3/8 inches; 205 x 135 mm). xxviii, 344, [1, table], [1, blank] pp. With half-title. With engraved frontispiece portrait, four engraved plates and four engraved head and tail piece vignettes for the beginning and end of each part. Original wrappers bound in.
Beautifully bound by Belgian bookbinders Samblanx and Wexkesser in full brown borocco. Boards elaborately ruled and stamped in gilt in leaf motifs. With a gilt central wreath and initial device. Spine stamped and lettered in gilt. Board edges double ruled in gilt. Gilt dentelles. Marbled endpaper. All edges gilt. Original front and back wrapper bounds in. Previous owner's bookplate on front free endpaper. An about fine, unread copy. Housed in a marbled slipcase.
Commonly cited as the first French novel (as opposed to picaresques and fables), La Princesse de Cleves is among the most scrupulously accurate historical fictions in literature. It is also arguably the first historical novel ever written and one of the earliest novels in any language.
"In La Princesse de Cleves, will and duty triumph over passion; but the moral is melancholy - that to do one's duty does not necessarily bring happiness. Mme de la Fayette may be said to have inaugurated the French novel of character, replacing the grandiloquence, incredible adventures and tedious length of Mlle de Scudery's romances by proportion, simplicity, sincerity, and an easy, sober style, without affectation or sentimentality" (Oxford Companion to French Literature). It single-handedly launched a new fiction of the vraisembable and can thus be considered one of the earliest modern psychological novels as well.
HBS 69537.
$1,750.
Price: $1,750.00
Item #69537