Les Dons des enfans de Latone : la musique et la chasse du cerf, poëmes dédiés au Roy

First edition illustrated with 8 engraved plates outside the text by Le Bas after Oudry, including a frontispiece and 6 hunting plates depicting stag hunting scenes (cf. Cioranescu, 60 125. Thiébaud 836-39. Cohen 952, with the often fanciful collation characteristic of this bibliography).

A fine copy complete in all its parts, notably retaining leaf Diij, which is sometimes found supplied in facsimile or replaced by a cancel leaf.

Contemporary full mottled tan calf, spine with five raised bands gilt-ruled and richly gilt in compartments with floral tools, gilt rolls to the spine ends, marbled endpapers, two engraved bookplates pasted to the endpapers and pastedowns, gilt fillets to the board edges, speckled edges, contemporary binding.

A rare miscellany devoted to music and stag hunting, containing the very first appearance in print of hunting fanfares (26 by Dampierre, cf. infra).

Several of the pieces had previously appeared separately and are here presented in revised form: La Musique (1714); Apollon (1733).

The volume also contains several noteworthy appendices: a Catalogue chronologique des opera représentés en France depuis l'année 1645, où ils ont commencé de paroître, jusqu'à présent (pp. 123-146); a highly useful Dictionnaire des termes usités dans la chasse au cerf (pp. 273-295); and Parodies faites par différens auteurs sur les fanfares de M. de Dampierre (pp. 319-330).

Marc-Antoine de Dampierre (1676-1756) was Master of the Royal Hunt and an accomplished musician (he was known as the “Father of Hunting Fanfares”). Jean de Serré de Rieux (1668-1747), councillor at the Parlement of Paris, was both a great admirer of Italian music and a librettist.

Engraved armorial booklabel of the film producer Raymond Dervaux, engraved by Silvain Guillot.