Jean Regnault de SEGRAIS

New edition after the first, very rare, published in 1670. Huet's Treatise on the Origin of Novels, in the form of a letter to Segrais, appears at the end of the first part of Zaïde.

Armorial copy of Charlotte Emilie Le Fèvre de Caumartin de La cour de Balleroy, daughter of Louis-François Le Fèvre de Caumartin, lord of Boissy, and wife of the Marquis de la Cour de Balleroy. Feminine arms are rare and sought after, as few women formed libraries with their coat of arms. The Marquise de Balleroy, who died in 1749, settled in Normandy, and maintained an intense correspondence with the highest nobility from which she descended.

Full speckled brow

New edition after the original of 1657 (Sommaville). Edition illustrated with a frontispiece and 6 unsigned figures (one for each novella as frontispiece).
In original wrappers, lacking binding. A light dampstain at the end of volume I, in the middle. Segrais (1624-1701) was secretary to Mademoiselle de Montpensier (from whom Madame de Lafayette would draw a narrative), and director of the French Academy. The collection comprises 6 historical novellas, a genre inaugurated a few years earlier by Madame de Lafayette's La princesse de Clèves. Lafayette's novels appeared under Segrais's pseudonym... In the preface, Segrais speaks of a princess close to Louis XIV and retired to a castle with