Oeuvres complètes de Shakspeare

Third edition of Benjamin Laroche's French translation.

Contemporary half polished tan calf over speckled paper boards, spines with four raised bands, decorated with gilt and blind-tooled fillets, tawny calf title and volume-number labels, marbled pastedowns, speckled edges. Some rubbing to the bindings, minor surface wear to the leather, occasional foxing, and a small area of paper loss, not affecting the text, on page 503 of the first volume.

Stamp of Bourdery, an attorney practising in Aubusson, on the half-title of each volume. This former owner can in all likelihood be identified with Judge Bourdery, a magistrate at the Aubusson court whose murder in 1886 became one of the most notorious criminal cases in the Limousin region.

The former owner of this attractive six-volume set of Shakespeare's complete works (here styled Shakspeare, at a time when the spelling of his name had yet to become standardised), Bourdery, was a lawyer and magistrate in Aubusson who met a tragic end. On 14 July 1886, he was murdered by one Jacques Christophe, a repeat offender who had received a fresh summons only the previous day to appear before the town's criminal court. The summons arose from allegedly slanderous accusations he had made against several members of the Aubusson judiciary, including Judge Bourdery himself. Lying in wait at his window with a loaded rifle, Christophe watched for the magistrate and killed him with a single shot as Bourdery was returning from the hospice, where he had been distributing sweets to orphans in celebration of Bastille Day. Yet Bourdery's own generosity had played a part in his tragic fate: despite his numerous offences, Jacques Christophe had remained at liberty, not least because of the judge's remarkable leniency towards him.

An attractive six-volume set of Shakespeare's complete works in contemporary half-calf bindings, from the library of a magistrate murdered by a defendant brought before his own court.