FÉLIBIEN, Michel (1665-1719). Histoire de la ville de Paris. Paris: Guillaume Desprez and Jean Desessartz, 1725.
FÉLIBIEN, Michel (1665-1719). Histoire de la ville de Paris. Paris: Guillaume Desprez and Jean Desessartz, 1725.

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FÉLIBIEN, Michel (1665-1719). Histoire de la ville de Paris. Paris: Guillaume Desprez and Jean Desessartz, 1725.

5 volumes, 2° (385 x 250 mm). Half-titles in vols. I and III. Engraved frontispiece, large folding engraved map of Paris unjoined on 3 sheets (a few tears crossing image repaired on verso), 32 engraved plates [30 folding, some containing 2 images]. (Lacking pp.[i]-cxx in vol.I, and with pp.cxxi-cxxvii misbound into vol.II, some pale spotting or staining, one folding plate with tear crossing text repaired on verso.) Contemporary calf, spines in 7 compartments with 6 raised bands, tan morocco lettering-pieces, edges stained red (a few spines repaired, some chipping and scuffing).

FIRST EDITION of Félibien’s Histoire, which provides a detailed history of medieval and Renaissance Paris, as well as “extensive documentary material – pieces justificatives – which had been collected by Félibien and arranged for publication by Lobineeay in Volumes 3, 4, and 5. This type of interest in historicism and in documentation is a continuation of antiquarian interest of the late sixteenth century…That Félibien’s study of Paris, comprising extensive amounts of secular, medieval documentation, was supported by the Benedictione monastery suggests the special position of the congregation of Saint-Maur in the establishing of pre-nineteenth-century attitudes about the Gothic period and about Gothic architecture” (Millard p.190). Brunet II: 1203; Millard French 73.

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