Discours sur l'histoire universelle par J.-B. Bossuet, évêque de Meaux ; précédé d'une notice littéraire, par M. Tissot, Membre de l'Académie française.

A fine edition complete with all 12 steel engravings with tissue guards after paintings by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Philippe de Champaigne, and Hyacinthe Rigaud, and its chromolithographic title page. Leafs containing the Discourse on Universal History  framed by floral, zoomorphic, figural and armorial interlaced borders. This copy is further enhanced with elaborate decorated initials and tailpieces, and a black-and-white frontispiece opening each part.

Sumptuous full navy blue cathedral polished calf bindings, smooth spines decorated in gilt and blind with Gothic tooling depicting ogival windows, dates and titles in gilt, Gothic lettering for titles; boards with a central panel in gilt and blind framed by multiple gilt fillets and a blind-tooled palmette border, board edges with repeated gilt and blind motifs, gilt edges, triple gilt fillet on joints, moiré pastedowns and endpapers.

Corners slightly bumped, a few minor scuffs to boards, bindings overall in very fine condition.

Scattered foxing, mostly marginal to text and plates, some leaves and plates with light browning.

List established by Georges Vicaire detailing the 12 steel engravings included in this edition:

"Portrait of Bossuet, engraved by Pigeot after H. Rigaud; Moses, engraved by Cousin after Ph. de Champaigne, within a border by A. Feart, engraved by E. Ollivier; the Nativity, engraved after Decaisne by Caron (border by Feart, engraved by E. Ollivier); Charlemagne, engraved after Meissonier by Caron (border by Feart, engraved by Ollivier); Isaiah, engraved after Meissonier by Cousin (border by A. Peyre, engraved by E. Ollivier); the Assumption, engraved after Murillo by Cousin; Jesus Christ, engraved after Decaisne by M. Lecomte (border by Chenavard, engraved by Ollivier); St. Paul, engraved after Meissonier by Cousin (border by A. Fries, engraved by Le Petit); St. Augustine, engraved after Murillo by Joubert (border by Feart, engraved by Ollivier); St. Basil, engraved after Herrera the Elder by Cousin (border by Feart, engraved by Ollivier); Greece, engraved after Tony Johannot by Revel (border by Feart, engraved by E. Ollivier); Rome, engraved after Tony Johannot by Pelée (border by Feart, engraved by Ollivier)."

(our own translation)

For over a decade, beginning in the 1820s, the Romantics' fascination with the Middle Ages permeated French bookbinding through the "cathedral style" decoration. Tools and panels featuring characteristic architectural elements of Flamboyant Gothic—rose windows and pointed arches—appeared on the spines and boards of what Henri Beraldi aptly described as "books of their time, in bindings of their time." This enthusiasm reached its zenith with Victor Hugo; the "cathedral style" enjoyed its greatest success adorning Notre-Dame de Paris.

Fine edition of the Discourse on Universal History bound in a handsome contemporary cathedral-style binding, where form and content merge, in the spirit of the bindings created for Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris.