Les Amours pastorales de Daphnis et Chloé

New edition of this ancient pastoral romance, illustrated with a frontispiece and eight full-page engravings. With several headpieces, decorated initials and tailpieces.

Dark yellow morocco, spine with five raised bands, author, title and date lettered in gilt, gilt fillets to board edges and headcaps, gilt inner dentelle, all edges gilt; tan morocco case by Riviere & Son, spine with five raised bands, author, title and date lettered in gilt, blind-tooled fillets. Raised bands lightly rubbed, with a few scuffs to the slipcase, otherwise a handsome copy.

Mortimer L. Schiff's guilt red morocco bookplate on the front pastedown.

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 pasted to the front pastedown. He assembled one of the foremost libraries of the interwar period. His collection began to take shape in 1911-1912, when he participated in the successive sales of the library of another great American collector, Robert Hoe III (1839-1909), acquiring a remarkable group of French classics. Mortimer L. Schiff's library was particularly renowned for its outstanding French and English bindings, the finest of which were described in two catalogues compiled by Seymour de Ricci in 1935.

Mortimer L. Schiff's library was dispersed by his heirs in 1938 in three successive sales held in London. The present copy is listed as lot 277 in the catalogue of the first London sale, held from 23 to 25 March 1938.