Poésies

Second edition illustrated with a Gothic mausoleum as frontispiece, 5 elegant plates hors texte in neo-Gothic frames after drawings by Colin, student of Girodet, 4 head-piece vignettes. Four leaves of sheet music by H. Berton for the musical setting of Verselets à mon premier né, Stances tirées du chastel d'amour and Triolets du chastel d'amour.
Contemporary bottle-green glazed full calf binding. Spine with false raised bands decorated with 4 cold-tooled stamps and fillets on the bands; roulettes at foot. Large central cold-tooled medallion on boards with monastic-type ornaments, wide cold-tooled border frieze and triple ruled frame. Double interior fillet. Marbled edges. A trace of pale dampstain on the frontispiece and one plate. The paper in the middle of the book is relatively warped, bearing witness to humidity, otherwise a superb copy in an elegant Romantic binding.
Attributed to Clotilde de Surville, a noble lady of the 15th century, these naive and graceful poems dealing with love and war were first published in 1803 by Charles Vanderbourg, but their authenticity was very quickly contested due to certain anachronisms. In this second edition responding to the criticisms, Vanderbourg endeavors, in an important justificatory preface, to defend the medieval origin of the manuscript. It appears today that the publisher was totally innocent of this deception, whose true author would be the Marquis Joseph-Etienne de Surville (1755-1798). This royalist conspirator, shot during the Revolution, would have composed this troubadour pastiche in emigration, borrowing the name of his ancestress. This collection had a very great success at the time and had a considerable influence on Romanticism.

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