Les Epistres morales du Sieur de Nerveze

Work — complete with its engraved title-page — by Antoine de Nervèze, forgotten pioneer of French devotional literature. Father or brother of the précieuse Suzanne de Nervèze, he was the "darling of the Ladies" according to a Mazarinade, and friend to the poets Scévole de Sainte-Marthe, Philippe Desportes, and Jean Bertaut. Edition enriched with vegetal and zoomorphic headpieces and decorated initials. On the headpiece of the first epistle, two eagles brood over and feed their eaglets, while on the initial of the epistle concerning slander, a snake and a snail indulge in persiflage together.

Contemporary vellum with turns-ins, spine with faded ink title at head and old library label at tail, original ties present. Bookplate on front pastedown of the lawyer Victor Duchâtaux, bibliophile of the second half of the 19th century.

Upper board slightly sprung, marginal staining to boards.

Front free endpaper damaged, small wormtrack beginning at upper cover, joined by a second at p. 13, then by a third at p. 135. These wormtracks slightly affect the text. Minor dampstaining to p. 37, then from pp. 87 to 157.

Front free endpaper annotated in brown ink.

"It should be added, moreover, that over the past thirty years there has been a renewed interest in Antoine de Nervèze in general studies devoted to the seventeenth-century novel. Credit for this goes to Henri Coulet, who broke new ground in 1967 with the publication of Le Roman jusqu'à la Révolution, but it is surprising that no substantial critical study has taken an interest in Nervèze's extensive and varied literary output."

Antoine de Nervèze : pieux Protée ou caméléon mondain ?, Nancy Oddo, Littératures classiques, Année 1997, 31, pp. 39-62

(our own translation)