SAʿDĪ ŠĪRĀZĪ

Rare first edition of d'Alègre’s French translation (cf. Brunet V, 25. Barbier II, 596.)

Contemporary full marbled calf, spine in five raised bands richly gilt in compartments with floral tools, red shagreen lettering-piece, marbled endpapers, gilt fillets to board edges now almost rubbed away, red-speckled edges, contemporary binding.

Restorations to spine and joints, marginal dampstain at the foot of about ten leaves, annotations and a pen drawing on a flyleaf.

This is the second translation of this masterpiece by the Persian poet and philosopher Saadi, one of the great Sufi masters of the thirteenth century.

The first, by André Du Ryer, dates from 1634.

It...

Seventh edition, first to illustrate Zimeo, adorned with 7 plates by Moreau le Jeune: a frontispiece and 4 plates for Les Saisons, engraved by Delaunay, Duclos, Prévost and Simonet, and 2 plates for the Contes, Poésies fugitives and Fables orientales, together with 4 headpiece vignettes by Choffard. Our copy is further enriched with separate pulls of the title-page ornament and Choffard's vignettes.
Nineteenth-century binding in full midnight-blue morocco. Five-raised-band spine decorated with pastoral flowers (vine, wheat and billhook, game and hunting horn...) and gilt compartments. Triple gilt fillet and...