Bibliotheque des Amans. [Odes Erotiques; par M. Sylvain M***. ] A Gnide. Paris, Veuve Duchesne, 1777.
First Edition. 18mo, (135 x 80 mm), pp. [iv], viii, [9]-212, pagination includes the attractive engraved title page, unsigned but attributed to Marillier and the half-title, which gives the alternative rubric ‘Odes Erotiques’ and supplying the author’s name, in an elegant nineteenth century binding, half green morocco over marbled boards, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, from the library of Claude Lebédel.
An attractive copy, though a nineteenth century binding, of a scarce early publication by Sylvain Marechal. The Bibliothèque des Amans, a compilation of poems celebrating love, consists mainly of 'Odes Erotiques' with a small final section of miscellaneous poems, quatrains, hymns and epitaphs. This is Marechal's second published work, published some seven years after his precocious Bergeries which earned him the nickname of 'Sylvain', the name by which he is known to this day and which is used on the title page of the present work. In the preface, Marechal explains that the volume is not intended to be very big but is long enough to fill just those moments in which Love makes a truce with Pleasure in order to render it more piquant. The miscellany is preceded by an 'Epître aux Femmes' and an 'Envoi' to Madame L.B.D.S.J.; it concludes with a table of verses in which are listed the tunes to which the various poems can be sung.
Includes a poem inspired by events written up in the Gazette de France in Oct. or Nov. 1776. cf. p. 190 (see note in Hollis).
Cioranescu 42496; Cohen-de Ricci coll. 678-679; Gay I 388.