Search

A splendid piece of twentieth-century Medievalism, with miniaturist Lucy Boucher’s brilliant hand-finished colour plates inspired by tapestries and stained glass. Le Jeu de Robin et Marion is usually considered the earliest French secular play with music, written in around 1282 or 1283 — a dramatisation of a traditional genre of medieval French song, the pastourelle. The pastourelle typically tells of an encounter between a knight and a shepherdess, but Adam de la Halle’s version of the story places a greater emphasis on the activities of Marion, her lover Robin and their friends after she resists the knight’s advances.

One of 380 copies, this one of 246 ‘regular’ copies after copies with original drawings etc. Worldcat lists a single copy (University of Antwerp).

First edition of this collection of bawdy and erotic medieval poetry, previously unpublished. Edited by Schwob and completed after his death by Paul Léautaud.

First edition. One of the most spectacular fruits of nineteenth-century Medievalism, with its elaborate chromolithograph interpretations of illuminated manuscripts, many with gold and silver inks. The text volume additionally contains a sequence of original photographic reproductions of prints by Wierix. Issued as a series of 70 individual numbers, the pagination of the plate volumes is very erratic, with numerous additional plates outside the main sequence and with some leaves having plates on both sides, others on just one. The appendix provides an historical and bibliographical key to the plates, listing manuscripts in mainly French and Italian libraries. Curmer’s output and importance is discussed at length by Isabelle Saint-Martin, ‘Rêve médiéval et invention contemporaine; variations sur l’enluminure en France au XIXe siècle’ in Coomans and De Mayer, eds, The Revival of Medieval Illumination, 2007.

First edition, and the first appearance of anything by Hoccleve in print: ‘La Male Regle de T. Hoccleve’, and five ballads from a manuscript belonging to the editor, the bibliophile George Mason, and now at the Huntington Library. It is dedicated to ‘that intelligent friend of literature’ and founder member of the Roxburghe Club, Lord Spencer. Jackson, p. 211.