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A Caen-printed bibliothèque bleue edition of a title popular in the genre, with other editions from Paris, Tours and Lyons. The woodcut portrait was evidently old when the edition was printed, the impression showing a scatter of wormholes affecting La Belle Hélaine’s face, hair and shoulders. The text has it origins in a Middle French chanson de geste of the fourteenth century. cf. Hélot 114 noting the degradation of the woodcut over its several issues, and this one specifically where: ‘la pauvre belle devient effrayante, avec un véritable trou à la place de l’oeil gauche’.

An unidentified bibliothèque bleue edition, without imprint but evidently complete, as issued. An Arthurian tale, telling of the giant created by Merlin from two whale bones and raised by him to serve King Arthur. Not found in Helot, or any of the usual catalogues.

A tiny catechism dialogue for the youngest of children, L’Enfant sage a trois ans was a popular title among printers of chapbooks in the bibliothèque bleue genre and is known in several imprints from different towns (notably Troyes). The text emerged in the later middle ages and appeared in print from the earliest times. Hélot, 76; Suchier, L’Enfant Sage... die erhaltenen Versionen (Dresden 1910), p. 227.

A lament in some five hundred lines of verse on the miseries of the footman and servant’s profession. This humble production, printed on very indifferent paper, merits a long entry in Nisard’s Histoire des livres populaires ou De la littérature du colportage (1852, vol. I, pp. 439-443) concluding: ‘Le papier, l’impression, les fautes dont il fourmille, tout lui donne des droits à être qualifié de rossignol, et à être, comme tel, vénéré des bibliomanes’ (’The paper, the printing, the errors with which it abounds, all qualify it to be called a nightingale, and to be, as such, revered by bibliophiles’).

A popular pocket dream dictionary abridged from Vulson de la Colombière’s influential Le Palais des curieux first published in 1660 and widely disseminated in popular form. The foot of the final page includes a series of numbers offered as the most likely to be drawn in the national lottery. René Helot, La Bibliothèque bleue en Normandie (1928), p. 245.

A popular history of the Norman crusader king who became Richard I of England. Hélot, 124.

A Caen Bibliothèque bleue issue of a popular moral romance tale that had also appeared with an apparently genuine Paris imprint in the same year. It is a French version of an English chapbook title issued by Elizabeth Newbery The Adventures of Master Headstrong, and Miss Patient, in their Journey towards the Land of Happiness, ?1785 (Roscoe, J6 (4); ESTC N29522). The subtitle reads: ‘Un récit des différentes traverses qu’éprouva M. Tétu, en abandonnant Miss Patience pour écouter Miss Passion, et ne voulan pas permettre à Madame la Raison, qu’ils rencontrèrent sur leaur route, de les diriger dans leur voyage’. The much-degraded woodcut (evidently reused from stock) bears a rather garbled version of the English caption in the original: ‘The rage of Passion will not staty [sic]; But Patience makes a wise delay’. Hélot, Bibliothèque bleue, 18

A life of the Northern French Saint Ortaire, abbot of Landelles (d. 580 AD). Ortaire was the object of pilgrimages to Bas-Bézier, and was invoked in the cure of various illnesses and credited with miraculous cures. The approbation is dated 1706, referring to the source work Abregé de la Vie du Bienheureux Saint Ortaire, not the present chapbook (though it appears incorrectly with this early date in various online catalogues). Frère, Manuel du bibliographe normand, II, p. 507; Hélot, 265.

Two popular literary fairy tales. L’Oranger et l’abeille appeared first in Madame d’Aulnoy’s Contes des fées (1697) while La Reine de l'Ile des fleurs is taken from Les Illustres fées (1698), sometimes attributed to Madame d’Aulnoy and sometimes to the Chevalier de Mailly. Hélot, 177. Issued as part of Chalopin’s Contes des fées series.

Puss in Boots: one of the many popular fairy tales printed for Deforge in Sillé, here with his familiar anagram imprint ‘Lélis, chez F. Goderfe’. cf. Helot 62 for two Rouen issues. Issued as part of Les Contes des Fees but here evidently issued/sold alone, without a title-page

One of the many popular titles issued by the Sillé bookseller François Deforge (1780-1831), almost all of which (as here) were printed in Le Mans, with his name on the title. cf. Helot 62 (Rouen edition).

The manuscript recollections of a Georgian gap-year visit to Paris, the chateaux of the Loire and the cities of Belgium and Holland, made by a cultivated young Englishman. Richard Liddell (or Lyddell) (?1694-1746), of Wakehurst Place, Sussex was the son of a commissioner of the navy who was a friend of Pepys. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, on 3 June 1712, at the age of approximately 17, then entered the Middle Temple in the same year, then spent the year between May 1715 and May 1716 travelling on the continent, as outlined in the present manuscript. He was among the first wave of English Grand Tourists heading to the continent in the aftermath of the peace heralded by the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. He inherited the family estates in 1720 following his mother's death, after they had passed to her upon his father’s death on 19 November 1717, including Wakehurst Place, Sussex.

Lyddell was a perceptive observer and the manuscript contains interesting descriptions of the architecture and culture in Paris in the year of the death of Louis XIV, including descriptions of recently completed monuments, of the Opéra and Comédie, of libraries and galleries, and eyewitness accounts of a service taken by Cardinal de Noailles in a recently refurbished Notre Dame and of the activities of the flamboyant Persian ambassador Méhémet Riza Beg, then recently arrived in Paris. The manuscript, though neat enough, appears to have been composed from recent recollection as Liddell makes his journey, or soon after his return.

Travelling from Calais his first ports of call in Paris are the Louvre, the Tuileries and the Palais Royal, where he describes both architecture and contents. He makes a special study of the huge monument Louis erected to his own glory on the Place Vendôme (which was destroyed in the Revolution) and transcribes the long inscriptions from the plinth. He visits the royal tapestry manufacturies, Les Gobelins, and makes an admiring description of the royal library: ‘... Of all the methods Lewis the 14th took to encrease his fame, there has none been taken more proper to give him glory, or has better succeeded than his collecting a library, and one of the most famous ones that has been heard of. There is not yet a room fitted up for the reception of so valuable, and numerous a collection, but an apartment of the Louvre is talk’d of, to be prepared to that intent. The books are at present in a house hir’d onpPurpose; they fill 26 rooms, as close set as the shelves can be, and are strained for place, the quantity of books encrease so much daily: his collection of prints are esteem’d the best of any either in publick or private libraryes; the number of volumes of prints only are near 400, all acquir’d at great pains and expence, and free for the perusall of any foreigner that comes there.’ There is along description of Versailles, with its mirrored walls and treasures, along with the Trianon, the royal menagerie and the extravagant waterworks at Marly.

Liddell is more descriptive of place and detail than of people, though he shows an interest in catholic ceremony and processions, and he is clearly impressed by the celebrity of De Noailles and Méhémet Riza Beg. Of the latter, he writes:

‘While we were in this City we had an opportunity of often seeing Mehemet Riza Beg, Ambassador from Persia to the French King who is a person of most extraordinary figure, of a sallow complexion with his beard, eyebrows, eyelashes and fingers painted scarlet, which suited oddly the colour of his face and dress of his country which he always wore. He was very dextrous at the Persian diversion of throwing the dart which he often exercis’d himself in. The manner of it is, in some spacious place riding full gallop one after another for one of the foremost, to turn short and dart at the person who pursues them and afterwards to be so nimble in their escape as to avoid the darts of the others...’

Liddell later gained the reputation of a rake, charming yet superficial, according to contemporary accounts, and finding real notoriety in November 1729 when he was surprised in adultery with Lady Abergavenny by her husband, who was awarded £10,000 damages against him. The salacious account of his trial was widely published. In order to avoid paying the damages, he appears to have made over his estates to his younger brother Charles and gone travelling again. In December 1733 Lord Ailesbury reported from Brussels: ‘Mr. Liddell here is a very pretty gentleman and well bred... No doubt he has a good estate, as one may judge by appearance in going to all countries to divert himself, and as he told me Lord Abergavenny should never have a shilling of his money (History of Parliament). Liddell was nonetheless elected as one of two Members of Parliament for the borough of Bossiney in Cornwall on 12 May 1741 and Chief Secretary for Ireland on 8 January 1745.

One of the strangest memorials of the Great War and one of the best known works by the nuns of Maredret, celebrated revivalists of the medieval art of manuscript illumination. The pastoral letter of Cardinal Mercier archbishop of Malines/Mechelen was addressed to the clergy and faithful of his diocese in the early months of the Great War, when Belgium was facing the terrible consequences of a German occupation, to encourage courage, fortitude and patriotic duty. Its text was taken by the two most talented nuns of the abbey of Maredret (near Namur), Agnès Desclée and Marie-Madeleine Kerger, and transcribed and illuminated under the most terrifying circumstances. The sheets were at one point hidden in a double-bottomed pig trough to evade discovery during the German occupation. The illumination records in medieval idiom key episodes of Belgium’s trials between 1914 and 191 — including the devastation of Aarschot, Dinant and Tamines, the execution of civilians, the burning of the halls and library of the University of Louvain as well as relief received from the United States. The medieval figures and scenes have subtle (even humorous) modernisations - notably the addition of modern Belgian, British and American flags, while the monstrous Krupp guns are rendered as canons. In each plate, the scenes are explained with brief captions on the tissue guards.

The manuscript was reproduced after the war and issued in this 1921 edition, the prefatory text in either French or English (this copy in French) and sent to supporters around the world, notably in the United States. This copy is one of the 750 numbered copies on Hollande (after 500 on Japon).

J.P. Morgan in New York was to become one of the nuns’ most effective patrons in the years following the war, notably purchasing their Messe pour les Époux made in 1915 in 1921. He had been introduced to the abbey by the head of the British Museum, Frederic George Kenyon via Belle da Costa Greene. The original manuscript of the pastoral letter remains at Maredret (classified a national ‘trésor’ in 2015), while the British Library holds a manuscript copy of a single page (Add MS 40082). The work of the Maredret nuns and the genesis of this book is described by Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, ‘Un Art très monastique. L’atelier des bénédictines de Maredret de 1893 à 1940] in Thomas Coomans and Jan de Maeyer (eds.) Renaissance de l'enluminure médiévale. Manuscrits et enluminures belges du XIXe siècle et leur contexte européen. Leuven University Press, Leuven 2007, pp. 295-309.

Dean’s Rag Book, number 291. A superbly preserved rag book from Dean and Co, who pioneered the rag book for the youngest children in 1903, producing boldly coloured printed calico books designed to be washable and indestructible. The Dean logo show two dogs pulling at a rag book. The pinked edges were designed to minimise fraying, and in this case the copy is unused.

Lots of Things, in addition to its various vocabulary images, includes the memorable verse:

‘A leaf of lettuce, or a bunch
Of carrots is, to rabbits
Far nicer than a costly lunch:
They have such frugal habits.

Pigs on the other hand are crude
And greedy, while their feeding
Is mannerless and even rude;
It shews their lack of breeding’. WorldCat: Auckland (NZ) and Cotsen (Princeton).

A file copy of Dean’s Rag Book no. 324, full of patriotic imagery - a union jack flying on a sandcastle, a shamrock, rose and thistle, a crown and sceptre, a medal, flags, a drum, a toy aeroplane and a soldier. A superbly preserved rag book from Dean and Co, who pioneered the rag book for the youngest children in 1903, producing boldly coloured printed calico books designed to be washable and indestructible. The Dean logo show two dogs pulling at a rag book. The inserted slip lists further numbered titles in 4 series of different sizes, as well as Dean’s rag dolls. The pinked edges were designed to minimise fraying, and in this case the copy is unused. JISC LibraryHub lists a copy at NLS. The Cotsen copy listed by WorldCat at Princeton has the same title but a different series number (228).

First edition of this very rare collection devoted to the street life of Paris, as observed by an imagined flâneur, some thirty years before Baudelaire defined the characteristics of the archetypal literary and aesthetic wanderer. The plates depict various familiar and unfamiliar aspects of Paris life — the title plate depicts the widow Lagarde, a dog and cat groomer, while other plates show browsers at a book stall in the Rue de Grès, walkers in the Luxembourg gardens, female basket carriers at la Halle, various vendors and hawker and fashionable women in the Boulevard de l’Opera. Complete sets are exceptionally rare (the British Museum catalogue lists only four of the series, for example).

Forest was a prolific caricaturist, working alongside both Grandville and Daumier for satirical journals such as La Silhouette and La Caricature. WorldCat lists only the Morgan copy (Michael Sadleir; from the library of Gordon N. Ray). Inventaire du fonds français après 1800, v. VIII, p. 101

First edition in French of Middleton’s A Dissertation Concerning the Origin of Printing in England (1734–5), which argued vigorously that Caxton had introduced the printing press to England, against the popular notion at the time that William Caxton had been preceded by a printer at Oxford. Added is a short introduction (in French) concerning Middleton. The ‘Londres’ imprint is false, and the book was almost certainly printed in Paris. The typographical headpiece is a delight. Rochedieu, 213.

Huysmans died on 12 May, 1907 after a long illness. He had dictated the text of his funeral invitation In his last days, having reportedly seen the handsome black-edged funeral notice of an acquaintance. Calling himself homme de lettres, adding his presidency of the Académie des Goncourt and membership of Légion d’Honneur, he simply states that he died ‘muni des Sacrements de l’Eglise’ (fortified by the sacraments of the church). It begins with the address ‘M[onsieur]’ for the addition of a recipient’s name, but it is blank here. The souvenir card is similarly black-edged and contains short excerpts from five of Huysmans’ works: En Route, La Cathèdrale, Sainte Lydwine, L’Oblat and Les Foules de Lourdes. The funeral took place at the church of Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and Huysmans was buried in the cemetery of Montparnasse — clothed, according to his last wishes, in the garb of a Benedictine monk. Banks, The Image of Huysmans, p. 205,

Nine rather luxurious illustrated writing sheets. Four are evidently destined for young people, with educational vignettes showing boys and girls proudly displaying rolled and ribboned diplomas, or offering work to their parents. The other five (which include one duplicate) are illustrated with themes of love or affection with captions: ‘Dictée par l’amour’ and ‘Amour allez offrir mon coeur ä mon ami, dites lui bien qu’il brule pour la vie’. Each motif bears a tiny number, indicating that they were part of a large repertoire of available images. A delightful survival illustrating an elegant aspect of the writing culture of France in the romantic era.

An attractive pocket edition of Ségur’s study of the historical condition of women in ancient and modern society (first published in 1802) with a fourth volume containing Ida Saint-Elme’s continuation (first added to Les Femmes in the edition of 1822 with the title De la Condition des femmes sous l’Empire et sous la Restauration). It contains chapters on the Empress Josephine, Princess Charlotte of Wales, Madames de la Lafayette, de Sévigné, du Chatelet, de Graffigny, Riccoboni, de Genli, and de Duras. This complete edition of 1828 is rare.