Details
MERMET, CLAUDE. La Pratique de l'Orthographe Francoise, Avec la maniere de tenir livre de raison, coucher cedules, & lettres missives. Livre tres-utile...specialement aux estrangers qui desirent avoir entrée en la langue Francoise, nommément à ceux qui n'ont eu ce bien de connoistre la Latine. Lyons: Basile Bouquet 1583. 16mo, 118 x 71 mm. (4 5/8 x 2 13/16 in.), tan calf, covers and spine gilt-panelled, brown calf title label, turn-ins gilt, edges stained red, by Thouvenin, with his gilt-stamp at bottom of spine, extremities slightly scuffed, repair to fol. O8 affecting 12 words, supplied in ink facsimile, one corner torn, a few very small stains, lightly washed and pressed, some early ink scribblings. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. Collation: A-V8 (V7-8 blank). 160 leaves. Woodcut printer's device on title, woodcut headpieces and initials. Errata leaf at end, on verso a poem in italic type, offering "du vin une fueillete [sic] pleine" to whomever would return the book to the undersigned owner.
EXTREMELY RARE handbook of French grammar, pronunciation, spelling, and writing, by a poet-notary from Savoie. Mermet, for many years a resident of Lyons, was the author of several obscure and rather earthy collections of verses (in one he compares friends to melons: "il en faut essayer cinquante avant qu'en rencontrer de bon"). This charming little instructional guide, one of the earliest French works of its kind, combines a grammar and spelling book with a manual for keeping account books and for letter-writing, and includes a long section on "words used in two places" (homonymes), a Socratic dialogue between two schoolboys who explore the peculiarities of the French language while walking through the streets of Lyons, a rhymed multiplication table, and elegant examples of epistles to a captain, a doctor, a creditor, a debtor, a schoolboy writing to his father to request advice on marriage, etc., along with felicitous responses. Baudrier X, 277 (Lyons Bibliothèque Municipale copy only); Brunet III, 1659 (citing the present copy only); Cioranesco 15000. Not in Buisson, no copies in the BN, BMC, NUC, Rothschild, or Adams.
Provenance: Jean-Louis-Antoine Coste, of Lyons, pencil inscription on lower endleaf identifying the copy as his (sale, Paris, April-May 1854, lot 596) -- Charles Marty-Laveaux, same inscription (sale, Paris, 16-17 March 1900) -- Hector De Backer, pencil inscription on front flyleaf (sale, 17 February 1926, lot 29).
EXTREMELY RARE handbook of French grammar, pronunciation, spelling, and writing, by a poet-notary from Savoie. Mermet, for many years a resident of Lyons, was the author of several obscure and rather earthy collections of verses (in one he compares friends to melons: "il en faut essayer cinquante avant qu'en rencontrer de bon"). This charming little instructional guide, one of the earliest French works of its kind, combines a grammar and spelling book with a manual for keeping account books and for letter-writing, and includes a long section on "words used in two places" (homonymes), a Socratic dialogue between two schoolboys who explore the peculiarities of the French language while walking through the streets of Lyons, a rhymed multiplication table, and elegant examples of epistles to a captain, a doctor, a creditor, a debtor, a schoolboy writing to his father to request advice on marriage, etc., along with felicitous responses. Baudrier X, 277 (Lyons Bibliothèque Municipale copy only); Brunet III, 1659 (citing the present copy only); Cioranesco 15000. Not in Buisson, no copies in the BN, BMC, NUC, Rothschild, or Adams.
Provenance: Jean-Louis-Antoine Coste, of Lyons, pencil inscription on lower endleaf identifying the copy as his (sale, Paris, April-May 1854, lot 596) -- Charles Marty-Laveaux, same inscription (sale, Paris, 16-17 March 1900) -- Hector De Backer, pencil inscription on front flyleaf (sale, 17 February 1926, lot 29).