[RACINE] CHARRON (Pierre) - Lot 55

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Lot n° 55
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[RACINE] CHARRON (Pierre) - Lot 55
[RACINE] CHARRON (Pierre) De la Sagesse, three books. Amsterdam: " suivant la vraye copie de Bourdeaux ", Louis and Daniel Elzevier, 1662. In-12 (134 x 74 mm), frontispiece, (14)-622-(8) pp. Contemporary speckled brown calf, ornate ribbed spine, gilt title, decorated edges, in a later soft brown chagrin flap folder, titled in gold on the spine and on the upper board. (Minor restorations to the headpieces and corners.) Copy signed "Racine" in ink on the title. The history of the "Racine" signatures on the copies of the library of Jean Racine is very complex. They can be attributed to three different hands: some are by the great playwright himself, others were affixed later by his sons Jean-Baptiste and Louis after they had inherited it, sometimes imitating their father's. On this copy, the signature is not in the hand of Jean Racine (see for example, his autograph signature on the copy annotated by him of an edition of Plato preserved at the BnF, Supplément grec 23). However, it contains elements of the signature of his son Louis as seen on the documents kept in the library of Port-Royal. Louis Racine inherited a large part of his father's library. It is with the dramatic death of his son, during the earthquake in Portugal, that he decided to sell this library, of which he kept only the books of theology. This is a copy of the fourth Elzevier edition of Charron's De la sagesse, the only one given by the Elzeviers of Amsterdam (Willems n° 1281). It seems to have escaped the census of Paul Bonnefon, who cites a copy also bound in brown calf but with different provenances ("La bibliothèque de Racine", n° XVII, having appeared in the catalogs Renouard 1829, n° 1395, Léchaudé d'Anisy 1861, n° 161, and Gonzalès). PROVENANCE Jean and Louis Racine (handwritten signature on the title); Catalogue des livres rares et précieux, manuscrits et imprimés composant la bibliothèque de M. Chedeau de Saumur, 1865, n° 255; Catalogue de la librairie Emile Lecat et Cie, ancienne librairie Bachelin-Deflorenne, 1881, n° 15; Eugène Paillet (1829-1901) (bookplate). REFERENCES Ernest Jovy, Etudes raciniennes. La Bibliothèque des Racine, Jean, Jean-Baptiste et Louis Racine, Paris 1933, pp. 9-10, part of the Bulletin du Bibliophile, 1932, pp. 558-559; Paul Bonnefon, " La bibliothèque de Racine ", Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France, 1898; Quérard, Archives d'histoire littéraire..., 2e année, 1856.
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