TABOUROT (Étienne). Lot n° 129

Les Touches. Premier [- Cinquiesme] livre. Paris, Jean Richer, 1585-1588. Together 3 volumes in-12, preserved in a red half-maroquin banded box, compartmentalized, and case (P.-L. Martin). Complete collection of all five books, in first edition, of this famous collection of verse epigrams. Extremely difficult to form. Étienne Tabourot (1549-1590) occupies an important place in the literary history of the 16th century. A lawyer at the parliament of his native Dijon, and a convinced ligueur, he is best known for his facetious works signed with his pen name: le Seigneur des Accordz. He was a friend of Pontus de Tyard, whose Douze fables de fleuves ou fontaines he published in 1585, and to whom he dedicated the first book of Les Touches. Divided into five books, Les Touches forms a kind of poetic joust through which, by means of touches and counter touches, the poet paints a truculent picture of his times. It is in this work that Tabourot best reveals his satirical verve. The first volume, containing books I to III, is in Bauzonnet-Trautz red morocco, from the libraries of the Comte de Lurde and Baron de Ruble (1899, no. 206), and P. Grandsire. The second volume is in mid-nineteenth-century red morocco; the last, in jansenist blue morocco signed by Cuzin, bears the Grandsire bookplate. These extremely rare volumes are presented in a three-compartment box lined with red nubuck by Pierre-Lucien Martin. The bottom of the title of the second volume has been redone (date and privilege in facsimile) and the binding shows some scuffing. Paper of the last volume slightly and evenly foxed, and restoration in the margin and at the corner of a few leaves at the end. Tchemerzine, t. V, pp. 834-835. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°821, 824 and 825.