DES RUES (François). Description containing all... Lot 24

DES RUES (François). Description containing all the singularities of the most famous cities & places of the Kingdom of France. A Troyes, chez Noël Moreau, [ca. 1625]. In-8, very faulty pagin. up to 319, then absent, sign. A-Cc 8 [except for 2 leaves], figs, period soft parchment, smooth spine, title in ink (disbound, accident to edge of 2 boards, stains to upper board; browning and foxing, snag affecting 2 letters on f.H7, one corner mq. in margin f. C4, ink stain on text f. I3; 2 leaves missing from the Y book). Extremely rare edition, the first published in Troyes, of this Description de la France which first appeared in Coutances in 1605 under the title "Les Antiquités, fondations et singularités des plus célèbres villes", and was a great success. The book was then taken up by popular printing centers: Rouen, then Troyes. The illustration, entirely engraved on wood, is composed of a portrait of King Louis XIII on the title, of vignettes showing cities, distributed in the text and on the last page, of bands, initials and caps. Note that 57 entries are preceded by a woodcut, and that there are only 13 repeated woodcut models, i.e. a large number of cities represented by the same figure. Absent from the BnF and CCfr catalogs; we only managed to locate 6 copies of this edition in public collections (Zentralbibl. Zürich, Univ. of Aberdeen, BN de Madrid, Welseyan Univ., USA, and two at the Médiathèque de Troyes. Of the latter two, one is described as "in very poor condition" (cl. 12° 19104), the other is incomplete by 13 pages (cl. 12° 1577). Provenance: old manuscript bookplates on the title, including Caillet, others crossed out. (Brunet II, 651; L. Morin, Essai bibliographique sur les ouvrages de François Desrues, Troyes, 1925, p.39 sq. ed. Troyes a, slight variant to the title).