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Madame de La Fayette, 1679
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The Princess of Cleves
Madame de La Fayette, 1679
[LA FAYETTE, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de (1634-1793).] The Princess of Cleves. London: R. Bentley and M. Magnes, 1679.
Rare first edition in English of "the first modern novel" (The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French). "No author influenced early prose fiction more decisively than this woman who entered the literary scene as a young précieuse during the golden age of the salons … Her major innovation is an unprecedented attention to psychology, an attention that provoked heated responses from contemporary readers and that modern readers see as the mark of her literary modernity”. ESTC lists just 5 copies in the UK and 5 in the USA. ESTC R10484.
Octavo (166 x 199 mm). License leaf, 6 ad pp. at end. Woodcut device on title (some spots and stains, a few blank corners torn away). Contemporary mottled calf (rebacked to style, corners restored); custom box. Provenance: "E. P." (early inscription on title page) – Mary Perkins (ownership inscription dated 1688 on rear flyleaf).
Madame de La Fayette, 1679
[LA FAYETTE, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de (1634-1793).] The Princess of Cleves. London: R. Bentley and M. Magnes, 1679.
Rare first edition in English of "the first modern novel" (The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French). "No author influenced early prose fiction more decisively than this woman who entered the literary scene as a young précieuse during the golden age of the salons … Her major innovation is an unprecedented attention to psychology, an attention that provoked heated responses from contemporary readers and that modern readers see as the mark of her literary modernity”. ESTC lists just 5 copies in the UK and 5 in the USA. ESTC R10484.
Octavo (166 x 199 mm). License leaf, 6 ad pp. at end. Woodcut device on title (some spots and stains, a few blank corners torn away). Contemporary mottled calf (rebacked to style, corners restored); custom box. Provenance: "E. P." (early inscription on title page) – Mary Perkins (ownership inscription dated 1688 on rear flyleaf).
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Heather Weintraub
Specialist, Books, Manuscripts, & Archives