Gatien de COURTILZ DE SANDRAS

Clandestine edition, probably printed in Holland. An engraved title by Choffart repeated in all 5 volumes. A fine edition whose interest lies in bringing together an important collection of gallant novels from the court of Louis XIV, the Histoire amoureuse des Gaules usually occupying only one volume. The 4 other volumes thus contain a little more than 15 other novellas or small gallant novels, some by Courtilz de Sandras, others remaining anonymous. The whole constitutes an important sum of this literature linked to the century of Louis XIV.
Contemporary full marbled brown calf binding. Smooth spine decorated in grotesque style with a scattering of stars. A crack to the upper joint of...

The rare first edition, long attributed to Madame de La Fayette, and published the same year as La Princesse de Clèves, then to Courtilz de Sandras and even to Pierre Daniel Huet.
Late nineteenth-century full morocco binding signed Bellevallée glazed old red. Jansenist spine with raised bands. Wide gilt inner border. Date at foot. Very fine copy, perfectly established, with wide margins, and unwashed.
Unlike La Princesse de Clèves, or La Princesse de Montpensier, the Mémoires de Hollande is not a historical novella, but presents itself as a novel of manners that uses modern first names. The work describes, through the love affair between a Jewish woman and a Lusignan, life in the...