Mithridate, Tragédie

First edition with the correct imprint of March 16, 1673.
Nineteenth-century full red morocco binding, Jansenist spine with five raised bands, date and place gilt at foot, combed paper doublure and endpapers, wide gilt dentelle framing the doublure, double gilt fillets on edges, tooled headcaps, all edges red, perfect binding signed Chambolle-Duru.
Provenance: from the legendary library of banker and collector Mortimer L. Schiff, owner of the New York Post and one of the founding members of the Boy Scouts of America, with his bookplate mounted on the front board. He assembled one of the most important libraries of the interwar period. His collection began in 1911-1912, when he participated in successive sales of the library of another great American collector, Robert Hoe III (1839-1909), acquiring about a hundred representative pieces from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His collection notably comprised a remarkable ensemble of first editions of French classics.
Sale, Sotheby & Co., July 7, 1938, lot 1134.