by Hackius for Elzevier

Provenance:  Front pastedown with armorial bookplate of Alexander Oswald Brodie (not, please note, the American officer and governor of Arizona Territory); title-page with Brodie's inked inscription, dated 1839, Dresden.

•  Brunet, I, 604; Gibson, Bacon, 185b; Willems 1058. On Bacon, see: Dictionary of National Biography.   Contemporary vellum with yapp edges, spine with early inked title; spine lettering rubbed, back cover darkened. Both pastedowns lifted, front pastedown with bookplate beneath; free endpapers lacking. Title-page with inscription as above; pages with a very few small scattered spots, almost entirely clean. A handsome copy.  (30360)

•  Brunet, I, 652; Willems 452.   Late 18th-century plain morocco, turn-ins with gilt roll, rebacked some time ago with lighter morocco; old leather rubbed and variably discolored, front cover with old patch repair. Front free endpaper with pencilled annotations and affixed cataloguing slip. A few pages with faint staining, most clean. One leaf with small paper flaw affecting about six letters. All edges gilt.  (27391)

The text of this teeny tome is printedentirely in Greek, except for Latin chapter headings in the table of contents, with one woodcut initial at the beginning and verse numbers in the inner margin of each page. Three variations of the title-page exist: one in all black, and two in combinations of red and black, as here, featuring the printer's woodcut device of a man picking grapes from a vine on a tree and the motto “Non solus.” One word of Greek and the words Testamentum and Ex officina Elzeviriana are printed in red on this title-page, and the place of printing is given as Lugduni Batavorum (not Lugduni alone), i.e., this is title-page variant C in Darlow and Moule's bibliography.

•  Willems 225; Rumball-Petre, Rare Bibles, 251; Darlow & Moule 4669 (title-page is var. C); Dibdin, I, 134–35.   Recent brown calf tooled in the Cambridge style, with marbled endpapers and blue edges; top edge gilt, and brown silk place holder. Ex-library with stamp on title-page verso and final page verso; waterstaining in varying degrees almost throughout, most strikingly (and in odd patterns) in the central section — very little other staining. Occasional early ink underlining and later pencil marginalia. An attractive, satisfactory little Elzevir, and an IMPORTANT production.  (30954)

These six comedies and tragedies — Les illustres ennemis, comedie; Berenice, tragedie; Timocrate, tragedie; La mort de l'empereur commode, tragedie; Darius, tragedie; and Le charme de la voix, comedie — comprise six of the seven plays making up the second volume only of a five-volume set, Les tragédies et comédies de Th. Corneille, printedfor the Elzevirs by Abraham Wolfgang in Holland, 1665–78. Six separate title-pages with the “Quaerendo” printer's mark andsix particularly lively, charming added engraved title-pages precede the six plays, each dated 1662 (the first editions date to 1656–59). This copy is lacking the general title-page dated 1665 and the first play, Le geôlier de soy-mesme (1662); the text, in French, is decorated with woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces, and sparse woodcuts of animals.

Rare: Searches of NUC-Pre1956 and WorldCat find the five-volume set Les tragédies et comédies at just one U.S. institution (Univ. of Chicago), andeach play individually in up to three U.S. locations only.

Provenance:  Inked monogram of Edwin Wolf II on front pastedown, and inscriptions of John Bridgman, Esq., on rear endpaper and pastedown.

A charming old sketch of a woman with a lute graces the front pastedown; a bit of much sketchier sketching marks the rear one.

•  Willems, Supplement, 1727 (b); Graesse, II, 268. Not in Goldsmid.   Contemporary vellum with yapp fore-edges; joints and front hinge repaired, new fly-leaf added. Lacking general title-page and first part, as above. Light soiling to edges with occasional very minor foxing or a light stain, two short marginal tears, one leaf with a corner-tip lost — a nice copy.  (5594)

Other works by Corvinus († ca. 1680) include Iurisprudentiae Romanae Summarium, and Ius Feudale.

•  Willems 1301.   Contemporary vellum, soiled; two small pieces of spine vellum missing. Engraved title-page starting to loosen; pages generally clean.  (30089)

The famous Elzevir print shop published this volume edited by Philippus van Limborch (1633–1712), Courcelles' student and successor. The eulogy following Limborch's preface was written by Arnold Poelenberg (1628–66), another professor at the Seminary whose remarks are still considered themost important source of information on Courcelles' life (1586–1659).

The Latin text is printed in roman and italic with occasional Greek and decorated with handsome woodcut initials and tailpieces. The title-page, printed in red and black, features the printer's device of Daniel Elzevir, the Minerva.

Provenance:  Swirly red stamp (not a rubber-stamp) blazoning owner's initials in a complicated monogram within a wreath, title-page verso.

•  Willems 1506 (“Belle édition”); Goldsmid, I, 123.   Contemporary full vellum with early ink title to spine, red speckled edges; leather scuffed and lightly soiled, upper joint starting. Ex-library: bookplate and old penciling on front pastedown. Waterstaining in outer margin of first eight leaves then intermittently, minor foxing on a few leaves only, occasional small ink blotches; tiniest touches of worming in bottom margin of 250 pages or so in middle of text and starting again at end, most noticeable on rear pastedown. Provenance mark as above.  (30405)

•  Willems 1565.   Contemporary vellum, spine with early hand-inked author, title,and publisher; lightly dust-soiled, three corners bumped. A few light smudges towards back of volume, pages otherwise very clean; one leaf torn from upper margin and repaired, affecting a handful of letters, sense unobstructed. Some lower corners nicked.A nice, one might say “classic” little Elzevir.  (27495)

The text is in French printed in roman and italic, with woodcut initials and head- and tailpieces as above. The last leaf contains a table of faults to be corrected in the second edition, as advertised in the printer's preface to the reader.

“The greatest maxim writer of France, one of her best memoir writers, and perhaps the most complete and accomplished member of her ancient nobility,” François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac (1613–80) caused outrage and offense among old friends when his cynical memoirs were surreptitiously published. Returning to court in Paris after years retired at his country estate, La Rochefoucauld quickly disavowed the memoirs; but at least a third of the work is his (EB, 11th ed.). The most genuine version of his memoirs were not printed until 1804.

•  Cioranescu, II, 40267; Barbier, Ouvrages anonymes, III, 204; E. Weller, Falschen und fingierten Druckorte, II, 16; Brunet, III, 848; Graesse, IV, 109; Willems 1997; Tchemerzine, IV, 25a; Marchand 2.   Contemporary calf, covers framed in gilt double fillets with gilt-tooled fleuron corner decorations; round spine, raised bands accented with gilt beading, title gilt in one compartment and delicate tooling in the others; gilt turn-ins and bright red edges, marbled endpapers. Extremities rubbed of old, bands included; leather lighter where neighboring books protected it from sun while shelved, that of spine cracking down center though the volume is not splitting. A very little mild foxing in places. Intermittently, lines and passages marginally highlighted in light pencil.  (30913)

First published in English in 1583, the text was written by English diplomat Thomas Smith (1513–77) during his stay in France as the Queen's ambassador between 1562 and 1565. A thoroughly contemporary view of British government, De Republica Anglorum gives the reader“a 'snapshot' view of [William] Cecil's political creed, a 'mirror' reflecting the political and constitutional implications of the heated debates on the Queen's marriage and the succession in the parliamentary session of 1563" (Hoak, p. 38). It was translated into Latin by Dutch geographer Joannes de Laet (1581–1649), who was also a director of the Dutch West India Company and so had a keen interest in England.

The text, in Latin, is printed in roman and italic, with floriated woodcut initials and tailpieces. The engraved title-page features a small portrait of King James I at the top center of the ornamental border.

Provenance:  19th-century presentation inscription in ink on front pastedown, dated 30/8/[18]63 at Genoa, “Dr. F. McCowan from John Nimmo of Genoa,” the latter a British ship's broker who sympathized with Giuseppe Garibaldi, leader of the Risorgimento.

•  Willems 337; Goldsmid, III, 50. On Smith's political role, see: D. Hoak, “Sir William Cecil, Sir Thomas Smith, and the Monarchical Republic of Tudor England,” in The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England (2007), pp. 37–54.   Contemporary vellum, yapp edges, with manuscript title to spine; scuffed and soiled, older manuscript on spine faded almost completely. Preliminary quire of eight leavesstrangely including two blanks interleaved with the six of text (Willems accounts for the six only), and these aremisbound. Age-toned with just a few spots, in good condition overall.  (30414)

Click the images for enlargements.

Statius was called by Godolphin the “most eminent of the poets of his day”; the Encyclopaedia Britannica adds that he “was clearly the poet of society in his day as well as the poet of the court” (811). The Oxford Classical Dictionary notes that he was a favorite of Chaucer's, and he is, of course, an important character in Dante's Purgatorio — Dante regarding him as a Christian. His is the risen soul purged of sin for whom the earth quakes and the spirits shout, in Canto XXI, and he accompanies Virgil and Dante on the rest of their journey as their valued companion.

•  Brunet, V, 512; Dibdin, II, 424; Graesse 480; Willems 1166.   Contemporary vellum, spine with hand-inked title; vellum spotted, corners bumped, the effect of the spotting not so disturbing in hand as on screen. Front pastedown with private collector's rubber-stamp; front free endpaper with old repair. Back free endpaper with armorial pressure-stamp; pastedowns with small pencilled annotations, back pastedown with early inked numerals. A few scattered small spots, pages otherwise clean.  (27360)

This first edition has a title-page in black and red with the printer’s device of the Amsterdam Elzevirs, “Ne Extra Oleas”—showing Minerva with owl and shield next to an olive tree—and it is printed in two columns in roman, italic, Greek, and Hebrew, ornamented with woodcut initials.

•  Willems, Les Elzevier, 1295. On the Vossius, father and son, see: Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, 307–309 and 322–23. Contemporary English calf ruled in blind, bumped and abraded with a little loss on corners and edges; joints fully open at base and some chipping at head and foot of spine. Paper, ink-lettered spine label; inked call number and date on title-page. Pastedowns entirely gone and remnants of a manuscript used as binder’s waste visible at gutters, inside covers; due to the pastedowns’ removal, much of the binder’s construction can readily be examined here. A little light waterstaining and browning to first and last leaves (only). All edges red.