Mame-Delaunay

First edition.
Contemporary green half sheep bindings (blue marbled boards). False raised band spines decorated with fillets, roll tooling at head and tail. Gilt titles and volume numbers. Some rubbing. Boards rubbed. A brown ink or water stain affecting the lower margin of the title page of volume 6 and the first 5 leaves, fading gradually, all within 2 cm. Paper generally fresh throughout.
Lamothe-Langon accomplished remarkable editorial work in organizing these outstanding memoirs of a little-known period following the Napoleonic Empire from the king's papers and manuscript documents. These are not merely political and historical memoirs but also cultural and intimate ones...

Second edition.
Binding in aubergine half calf, smooth back adorned with gold cartridges decorated with golden florets, golden monogram tail tail, marbled paper plates, paper guards to the tank, very slightly posterior binding signed Closs in foot of the back.
Some foxinges.
Illustrated book of a vignette on the title page.
Rare autograph dedication signed from Edouard d'Anglemont to Alcide de Beauchesne on the fake title page.

Edition in large part original, the last two volumes contain first edition: "The Council", "The Exchange", "The Duty of a Woman", "The Honeymooners," "The beginning of the Woman of Thirty" "Rendezvous", "the Finger of God", "the two meetings", "atonement" (five chapters, unrelated, form the first draft of the Woman of thirty years).
Binders half navy sheepskin, back with four false nerves decorated with dots and gold jewels, marbled paper plates, guards and contreplats of handmade paper, sprinkled edges, slightly posterior bindings dating from the second half of the nineteenth.
donos pen heads of the guards of the first two volumes.
Some foxing mainly affecting the end of the...

The rare first edition, one of the most sought-after of Balzac’s major novels according to Clouzot.
Contemporary half speckled sheep over marbled paper boards, gilt fillets to spine.
A little occasional spotting, a short-margined copy.
Provenance: from the library at the Château du Lac Tegern (Tegernsee), which belonged to Prince Charles-Theodore of Bavaria (1795-1875). Charles-Theodore of Bavaria, the son of the first King of Bavaria, Maximilian I, was "Generalfeldmarschall" and personal councilor to the King of Bavaria (stamp: "S.K.H.D Prinzen Carl V. Bayern Güter Administration Tegernsee").
A rare copy with a princely provenance in a strictly contemporary binding.