Maurice de SAXE

The 1757 edition, the finest early edition of Mes Rêveries, the only substantial work left by Maurice, Comte de Saxe. The first edition, published at The Hague the previous year by Zacharie de Pazzi de Bonneville from a defective copy of the manuscript, contained only 40 plates. Prepared by the Abbé Gabriel-Louis Pérau, the present edition includes 84 plates, 61 of them folding, drawn by Pierre Patte from the Marshal’s designs and sketches and engraved by Moitte, Tardieu, and Patte. They depict military dress and equipment, troop dispositions, and plans and profiles of fortifications. Pérau also added a 134-page abridged life of the Marshal together with...

Second edition, a reprint of the first folio edition published in 1756 by the same publisher. A rare edition, illustrated with 40 plates including 4 folding and 16 double-page (arms, costumes, plans, manoeuvres...). Large vignette with coat of arms on the title-page, and 41 ornaments (headpieces, tailpieces). Title-page printed in red and black. At the end, Supplement aux Reveries, with its own title-page; this short addition, spanning only a few pages, contains the corrections made to the original. A two-volume quarto edition appeared in Paris in 1757.
Bound in later full marbled brown calf; a skilful early 20th-century pastiche signed Saingy at foot. Spine with raised bands richly...