Charles SOREL

First edition of an important work by Charles Sorel, historiographer of France and novelist, in which he surveys with severity and wit the literary production of his time, which he considered overly given to fiction.

 Complete with its eagle headpieces.

Contemporary full mottled brown calf, spine with five raised bands decorated with gilt compartments and gilt title, gilt roll on the board edges, red mottled edges. 

Upper headcap missing, lower headcap slightly split, scuffs, minor cracking and marginal staining to the boards, corners and board edges rubbed. 

Scattered foxing and browning. 

An ink gift inscription on the first and second pastedowns "To Mr Rahault [de Villers] [...] auditor at the Chamber of Accounts in Paris."

(our own translation)

The rare first edition of this collection in which all the works have been chosen by Charles Sorel. Lacking the frontispiece. A second part will appear in 1662.
Contemporary limp full vellum binding. Smooth spine with later black ink title. Lacking endpapers. Book partially detached from the binding and held only by a few stitches.
Charles Sorel composed this collection of gallant pieces in prose whose authors have not been identified; one can distinguish more than 18 pieces on love, banter and gallantry, testimonies to a literary genre now disappeared, precious literature, of a certain frivolity, and which owed much to the literary salons of the time. One will note the following pieces: L'origine & le progrés des rubans; leur défaite par les princesses jarretieres & leur rétablissement en suite; Dialogue des yeux & de la bouche; La carte du royaume d'Amour; Discours de l'ennemy d'amour, & des femmes. Avec la réponse par Erophile; Relation grotesque, burlesque, comique, & maccaronique, des amours & transformations de Vertumne pour la belle Pomone nymphe neustrienne, avec leur genealogie. Et la mort pitoyable de ce pauvre pendu d'Iphis, miserable amant de la cruelle Anaxarete. Le tout fidelement extrait des Metamorphoses reformées... (we know that this last work is by Sorel himself, who never ceased to criticize Ovid in several of his works).