Commines, Philippe de MEMOIRS OF MESSIRE PHILIPPE... Lot 18

Commines, Philippe de MEMOIRS OF MESSIRE PHILIPPE DE COMINES, Seigneur d'Argenton, or one finds the history of the Kings of France LOUIS XI. & CHARLES VIII. NEW EDITION Revised on several Manuscripts of the time, enriched with notes & figures, with a collection of treaties, letters, contracts & instructions, useful for history, & necessary for the study of public law & the law of nations. By Messieurs GODEFROY. Augmented by the Abbé LENGLET DU FRESNOY In LONDON and is in PARIS, Chez ROLLIN, Fils, Quai des Augustins 1747 4 volumes in 4° 26 x21 cm Collated complete with its 52 portraits of Odieuvre of the 2 frontispieces, the two battle plates and its two folding tables. Other title : enriched with portraits ... & augmented with the History of Louis XI. known as the Scandalous Chronicle (by Jean de Troyes)]. From the printing house of C.F. Simon son, printer of the Queen and of Monseigneur L'Archevesque, 1747. 1 frontispiece-(4)-Cxviii-632 pp. + 1 folding table h.t. + 16 portraits h.t. + 1 f. n.ch. before the Preface ("Homage dedicated to the hero of our days [ ] Marshal Count of Saxe") ; (4)-X-660 pp. ; 12 Portr. (4)-XIX-(1)-650 pp. 1] Bl., 14 portraits and [4]-VIII-432-215 pp. + 1 folding table ; [12 plates of which 11 Portr. Bound in full contemporary speckled calf; spine with 5 raised bands; gilt decorated boxes. Red morocco title page, gilt title. Blue marbled edges. Roulette on the edges and inside. Provenance : Ex libris on the title page : library of Jean-Francois Thurot Member of the institute (1768-1832, French hellenist and philosopher. ) Only a few rare copies contain the portrait of the Maréchal de Saxe accompanied by the dedication to him. Our copy contains the dedication but not the portrait. The best and most beautiful early edition. Commines died in 1511, thirteen years later, the memoirs appeared for the first time, in a rather altered form: "cronique et hystoire faicte et composée par feu messire Philippe de Commines", Paris, Galliot du Pré, April 1524. The text was mutilated, full of gaps and mistakes. The same Galliot du Pré, the same year, in September, put on sale a new edition a little improved, and especially a little less incomplete. The year 1552 had marked a notable progress with the first edition of Denis Savage who had had for Louis XI a manuscript, for Charles VIII the first impressions. A new step forward was taken by Theodore and Denis Godefroy, who published in 1649, at the Louvre printing house, a text which used two manuscripts and the Savage edition. New lessons appeared and the editors added to the text a valuable collection of supporting documents. In 1747, the Abbé Lenglet-Dufresnoy published in London and Paris this magnificent edition of the memoirs. "To the documents already given by the Godefroys, he adds many new ones, and this appendix, still consulted today, is the best part of the work" (Molinier, SHF, 4663)