L'Art historique, poëme en quatre chants.

Rare first edition of this collection of poetry by a member of the Société des Bibliophiles français, issued in a very small number of copies and absent from non-European libraries. 

Contemporary half red morocco, title gilt to the spine decorated with long gilt tools, boards covered in embossed paper, marbled pebble-pattern edges, endpapers and pastedowns.

Brown ink inscription by the author on the half-title, very likely to his son-in-law Joseph Maurice Le Sage d’Hauteroche, husband of his daughter Antoinette Denise: “a gift to Monsieur le Comte d’Hauteroche by the Marquis du Roure”. (our own translation)

Light scattered foxing.

Small contemporary correction in brown ink on p. 96, “siècle” struck through and replaced with “âge”.

“Among four or five other publications in verse, notice has been taken of a didactic poem in four cantos, L’Art historique, by an anonymous author whose lines are easy, full of meaning and sound judgement, and of an elegant simplicity; and of a collection of Odes et poésies diverses by M. Victor Hugo, written in a warm and vigorous style; but above all of three Messeniennes Short Stories by M. Casimir Delavigne.”

Annuaire historique et universel for 1822, by C.-L. Lesur, p. 853.