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Details
Le Parangon des nouvelles honestes utiles et delectables. Lyons: François Juste, 1533.
Long 8° (140 x 63mm). Woodcut architectural title border incorporating printer's initials, 29 small woodcuts flanked by columns, and black-on-white woodcut initials. (Small hole in fo.38, probably a paper flaw, affecting a few letters, very slightly browned.) Mid-19th-century French red morocco gilt, green morocco pastedowns elaborately gilt, marbled endpaper, gilt edges, pale blue chemise with green morocco spine label, by Trautz-Bauzonnet. Provenance: Edward Vernon Utterson (?1776-1856, booklabel, sale Sotheby's, 19 April 1852, lot 1257, £3.2.6 to Techener) -- Felix Solar (1811-1870, sale Paris, 29 November 1860, lot 1991, 1105FFr, described as 'delicieux exemplaire') -- Max. Lud. de Clinchamp (red leather booklabel) -- Raoul-Léonor, comte de Lignerolles (1816-93, pencilled ascription, sale 1894/5, lot 1874, 960FFr).
VERY FINE, APPARENTLY UNIQUE, COPY of the third edition of the Parangon des nouvelles, modelled largely on Boccaccio's Decameron, The nouvelle as a literary form was introduced into France by the Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (c.1460), but aside from shared characteristics of the genre, the Parangon depends on Italian-German sources more than French for its inspiration. It is a short story which purports to be true and to relate recent events (hence "nouvelle"), to be detailed in its description and compelling in its narrative. Of the 47 stories contained in the Parangon, 15 derive from Boccaccio, 20 from Poggio, and 7 from Valla; 5 are adaptations from chapters of Til Eulenspiegel, and constitute the first translations in French of that work. The 1531 and 1532 editions of the Parangon were accompanied by Petrarca's Paroles joyeuses, emphasizing its ties with Italian humanist literature.
Its popularity and small size dictated the low survival rate of all editions, and the present copy appears to be unique. The 1852 Sotheby's catalogue cited a Stanley copy, but the Utterson-Solar-Clinchamp-Lignerolles copy is the only one of Juste's 1533 edition cited by standard bibliographies. No copy is in NUC, the Bibliothèque nationale or the British Library, and the 1979 reprint even doubted the existence of the present copy (cf. Gabriel A. Pérouse, ed. Paris-Geneva: 1979). Brunet IV, 364-65 (citing this copy as 'un somptueux exemplaire' of 'un livret fort rare').
Long 8° (140 x 63mm). Woodcut architectural title border incorporating printer's initials, 29 small woodcuts flanked by columns, and black-on-white woodcut initials. (Small hole in fo.38, probably a paper flaw, affecting a few letters, very slightly browned.) Mid-19th-century French red morocco gilt, green morocco pastedowns elaborately gilt, marbled endpaper, gilt edges, pale blue chemise with green morocco spine label, by Trautz-Bauzonnet. Provenance: Edward Vernon Utterson (?1776-1856, booklabel, sale Sotheby's, 19 April 1852, lot 1257, £3.2.6 to Techener) -- Felix Solar (1811-1870, sale Paris, 29 November 1860, lot 1991, 1105FFr, described as 'delicieux exemplaire') -- Max. Lud. de Clinchamp (red leather booklabel) -- Raoul-Léonor, comte de Lignerolles (1816-93, pencilled ascription, sale 1894/5, lot 1874, 960FFr).
VERY FINE, APPARENTLY UNIQUE, COPY of the third edition of the Parangon des nouvelles, modelled largely on Boccaccio's Decameron, The nouvelle as a literary form was introduced into France by the Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (c.1460), but aside from shared characteristics of the genre, the Parangon depends on Italian-German sources more than French for its inspiration. It is a short story which purports to be true and to relate recent events (hence "nouvelle"), to be detailed in its description and compelling in its narrative. Of the 47 stories contained in the Parangon, 15 derive from Boccaccio, 20 from Poggio, and 7 from Valla; 5 are adaptations from chapters of Til Eulenspiegel, and constitute the first translations in French of that work. The 1531 and 1532 editions of the Parangon were accompanied by Petrarca's Paroles joyeuses, emphasizing its ties with Italian humanist literature.
Its popularity and small size dictated the low survival rate of all editions, and the present copy appears to be unique. The 1852 Sotheby's catalogue cited a Stanley copy, but the Utterson-Solar-Clinchamp-Lignerolles copy is the only one of Juste's 1533 edition cited by standard bibliographies. No copy is in NUC, the Bibliothèque nationale or the British Library, and the 1979 reprint even doubted the existence of the present copy (cf. Gabriel A. Pérouse, ed. Paris-Geneva: 1979). Brunet IV, 364-65 (citing this copy as 'un somptueux exemplaire' of 'un livret fort rare').
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