"Hasten slowly, and without losing courage, / Twenty times put your work back on the anvil"

[L'Art poétique]

Name: Nicolas BOILEAU • [The Art of Poetry] • [L'Art poétique] • 1793
Brand: DETERVILLE
SKU: 91836
Availability: OutOfStock
Author: Nicolas BOILEAU

[The Art of Poetry]

Chez Déterville|Paris 1793|12.4 x 20.1 cm|Relié

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⬨ 91836

Edition compiled from earlier printings, notably the Amsterdam printing of 1713 and the London one of 1772, complete with its frontispiece portrait of the author engraved by Pierre Adrien Le Beau.

Contemporary half brown sheep binding with parchment corners, smooth spine decorated with gilt grotesque tools and gilt sun-shaped fleurons, dark green morocco lettering-piece, turquoise blue paste paper boards.

Light rubbing to headcaps, corners and board edges, darkening to the margins of the boards, faint white offsetting to the rear board, old traces of adhesive tape to the pastedowns and endpapers.

Scattered foxing mainly in the second half of the volume. A handsome copy.

"The text and notes of volume I of this edition have often been reprinted separately, typically under the title 'Satires et œuvres diverses', together with the petition and decree concerning Aristotle, the heroes of romance (nos. 76 and 89), the satires against marriage and the tax-farmers (no. 20), and the poems of Sanlecque… This is the case, among others, with editions nos. 129, 133, 134, 139, 143a, 144, 144a, 146, 147b, 149, 150, 151, 159, 162, 163, 168, 186 and 190 [the present copy], which, owing to their typeface, preserve in several passages a purer text than almost any edition published after that of 1713."

Jacques Berriat-Saint-Prix, Œuvres complètes de Boileau, 1857