Remarques sur le gouvernement du royaume durant les regnes de Henry IV, surnommé le Grand, de Louys XIII, surnommé le Juste et de Louys XIV, surnommé Dieu-donné, le Grand et l'Invincible. Paris, Pierre de Marteau, 1688.
First Edition. 12mo (136 x 78 mm), pp. 197, [3] table, extra-illustrated with 12 early eighteenth century engraved portraits, with tissue-guards, title-page and last leaves considerably browned, the final leaf restored at the gutter, corners of title and one small marginal tear repaired, several other smallish old paper repairs, tear to corner of A2 (possibly original paper fault), in nineteenth century blue straight-grained morocco by Simier, covers with a roll-tool border in blind and gilt, spine tooled in compartments in blind and gilt, with gilt rules and lettering, the lower section dated and lettered ‘Relié par Simier’, board edges and dentelles gilt, extra vellum flyleaves, pink silk marker, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, with the later booklabel of Robert J. Hayhurst and the pencilled inscription ‘From the library of A.A. Renouard, extra illustrated’.
A fabulous copy of this scarce account of seventeenth-century French politics, extra-illustrated by Renouard and bound by Simier. Listed by Renouard under ‘Histoire’, the anonymous text is by Gatien Courtilz de Sandras, the popular novelist most remembered for his memoirs of d’Artagnan and his tales of adventure and derring-do under the administrations of Richelieu and Mazarin.
Antoine-August Renouard (1765-1853) was an industrialist and political activist who turned his attention to bibliography and bookselling after the Thermidore coup of 1794. An avid collector and bibliographer of Aldine and Estienne editions, Renouard swiftly gained a reputation for collecting fine books, both illustrated and handsomely bound. The present example, extra-illustrated and in a fine signed binding, is an excellent example of Renouard’s taste. Internally the work is a little browned and has seen some restoration but the twelve additional portraits are in good condition and the binding fresh.
Renouard, Catalogue de la bibliothèque d’un amateur, IV, p. 152.