Recueil de Pieces Galantes en Prose et en Vers, Tome Second (Collection of Gallant Pieces in Prose and Verse, 2nd volume)

Paris: Guillaume Cavelier, 1691. Leather Bound. Very Good/No Jacket. 16 x 9 cms (6.5" x 4"). PUBLISHING DETAILS: Very early edition of this much admired collection of light verse and prose, this being the second volume of two, published by Guillaume Cavelier of Paris in 1691. 240 speckle edged pages. Size; 16 x 9 cms (6.5" x 4"). Weight; 195g (7 ounces). CONDITION: I would rate this as very good. The full period speckled calf covers, with 5 raised bands to the spine, which also has gilt decorations and red moroccan spine labels, are generally clean and sound, with just a little wear (see photo). The binding is sound and tight throughout - probably rebound at some time. The text, with elaborate vignette woodcut ornamentation throughout, is clean and sound. There is a tear with small loss (not affecting the text) to the bottom corner of page 169/70. The endpapers are a delightful combed pattern - not, I would think, original. There is a small label 'Bibliotheque de M. Lesage, Didier'. This is altogether a very fine volume that will look most handsome on the bookshelf. THE BOOK: Full title: Recueil de Pieces Galantes en Prose et en Vers de Madame la Comtesse de la Suze, et de Monsieur Pelisson. Augmente de plusiers Pieces nouvelles de divers Autheurs. Henriette de Coligny was renowned in her life for her conversion to Catholicism, divorce from a brutal husband, several lengthy and ruinous court cases and her glittering Paris salon - she numbered Christina of Sweden, Ninon de l'Enclos and Madeleine Scuderi among her friends. Perhaps she is best remembered, though, for her poetry - mostly odes songs, madrigals, roundels and stanzas - and her elegies, characterized by their passionate but rigorously unsentimental expression of love, and which the critic Boileau described as being 'of infinite pleasure'.