The Renard–Masurier copy of the complete first edition — with the engraved Schouten portrait and the whole of the Le Cène publisher’s catalogue — bound in red morocco signed and dated by Duru in 1860. Renard’s octagonal bookplate survives beneath the later plate of Louis Masurier, and the exact concurrence of edition, Duru binding and Schouten portrait identifies this volume as lot 1431 of Renard’s sale of 1881. A second engraved portrait of Henriette has been added before the title.

Small format (153 × 91 mm). Two engraved portraits, one added; [π]⁴, comprising the title and Preface; A–P⁸ Q⁴. The text is paginated 1–223; the first of twenty-five pages of the Catalogue des Livres qui se trouvent à Amsterdam, chez Michel Charles Le Cène is printed on the verso of p. 223, with the remaining twenty-four pages continuing through P⁸ Q⁴. Title in red and black, dated M.D.CCXX, over an engraved vignette bearing the motto Finis ab origine pendet, “the end depends upon the beginning.” It is Le Cène’s own device, used on other of his books; on a life of a woman dead at twenty-six it falls aptly all the same.

Madame de La Fayette

Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de La Fayette, is the author of La Princesse de Clèves (1678), long regarded as the first modern French novel. Married in 1655 to François Motier, comte de La Fayette, she moved in the inner circle of the court of Louis XIV. Her husband’s sister was superior of the Visitandine convent of Sainte-Marie de Chaillot, and it was there, on visits, that she came to know the exiled royal family of England — and the young princess whose life she would write.

Henriette d’Angleterre

Henriette-Anne d’Angleterre (1644–1670) was the youngest daughter of Charles I of England, born at Exeter and carried to France as an infant during the Civil War; her father was executed in 1649. In 1661 she married Philippe de France, duc d’Orléans — Monsieur, the only brother of Louis XIV — and as the first Madame she was the bright centre of the young court. She died at Saint-Cloud in June 1670, aged twenty-six, so suddenly that poison was suspected at the time. Bossuet preached her funeral oration, and gave the French language one of its most famous sentences.

A life written from within

La Fayette wrote this history from inside the household, not from papers. She began it about 1665 at the princess’s own wish and largely in her company, and continued it to 1669; the account of the death was added after July 1670. It is neither romance nor chronicle but something between the two — a life observed at close range by the writer who, a few years later, would compose La Princesse de Clèves, and it stands at the boundary where the French novel and the memoir divide. The manuscripts were lost by the nineteenth century: when Anatole France edited the work in 1882 he was obliged to follow this 1720 text. A contemporary manuscript resurfaced in the twentieth century and provided the text for Marie-Thérèse Hipp’s critical edition of 1967. For a century and a half the printed book was the text.

The 1720 edition

First edition, published at Amsterdam by Michel-Charles Le Cène in 1720, twenty-seven years after the author’s death. On 18 July 1720, while the book was still on the press, Le Cène advertised it in the Amsterdamsche Courant as onder de pers and shortly to appear. The publisher’s catalogue belongs to the book’s original construction: its first page is printed on the verso of p. 223 and its remaining twenty-four pages occupy P⁸ Q⁴. This copy contains all twenty-five pages.

The portraits

The engraved portrait of Henriette by G. Schouten f., called for by Tchemerzine, is present in a strong impression. It is the scarce plate of the edition: Renard’s 1881 catalogue describes it as qui manque presque toujours, almost always missing. A second portrait, of the Duchesse d’Orleans within a laurel wreath upon a plinth, has been added before the title on a slightly smaller and more toned leaf. Its design is that of the small Amsterdam plate used in tome III of Limiers, Histoire du règne de Louis XIV (Amsterdam, aux dépens de la Compagnie, 1718), at the opening of Book V and the 1661 marriage that made Henriette Duchesse d’Orléans. The present impression is unlettered, like the two impressions in the Royal Collection (RCIN 602123 and 616063), and is a reduced copy, in reverse, of the larger portrait engraved by Jean Audran.

The binding

Red morocco in the jansenist taste — the covers severe and undecorated, the work reserved for the spine, the board-edges and the broad gilt turn-ins, over comb-marbled endpapers, the edges gilt on marbling. Signed and dated in gilt to the turn-in DURU 1860. Hippolyte Duru was among the foremost Parisian binders of the mid-nineteenth century; a jansenist morocco of his, on an early edition of a court memoir, is precisely the dress such a book was given by the collectors who prized it.

Provenance

Joseph Renard (1822–1882) of Lyon, with his brother Francisque, acquired François-Emmanuel Verguin’s process for the red aniline dye later called fuchsine and patented it in 1859. From the early 1860s Renard formed one of the notable private libraries of his day; he was himself a bibliographer, with a particular interest in French books carrying Dutch or pseudo-Dutch imprints. His octagonal plate, lettered Bibliothèque de M^r J. Renard, is partly covered by the later red strap-and-buckle plate of Louis Masurier, establishing the provenance sequence Renard–Masurier.

The exact title and edition, Duru binding and Schouten portrait identify this volume as lot 1431 in Renard’s sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 21–30 March 1881; a priced copy of the sale catalogue records 34 francs beside the lot. Léopold Niepce records that Renard had selected books put into belle condition at his own expense and enriched copies with portraits and autographs. With its Duru binding and additional portrait, this volume is a characteristic example of the taste of his library.

Provenance documentation

An old bibliographical note in brown ink on the front free endleaf records the title, imprint, Duru binding, first-edition status, Schouten portrait and bel exemplaire, closely following the description of Renard sale lot 1431. Later graphite notes record the collation, both portraits and the reference Tchemerzine-Scheler III, 842. The volume is accompanied by a French bookseller’s catalogue description naming both Renard and Masurier and priced 8,000 francs.

Literature

Tchemerzine, original edition, VI, p. 358; Tchemerzine-Scheler, revised edition, III, p. 842; Picot, Catalogue Rothschild III, no. 2288, p. 103; Brunet III, 744; Bourgeois & André III, no. 1829; Catalogue de livres rares et précieux imprimés et manuscrits, la plupart français et latins, de la bibliothèque de M. J. Renard, de Lyon, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 21–30 March 1881, lot 1431. On Renard: Léopold Niepce, Les bibliothèques anciennes et modernes de Lyon (1876), pp. 480–495; P. M., “Joseph Renard,” Revue lyonnaise, no. 4 (November 1884); W. Poidebard, J. Baudrier and L. Galle, Armorial des bibliophiles du Lyonnais, Forez, Beaujolais et Dombes (1907), pp. 555–556. On the text: cf. Anatole France’s edition (Charavay, 1882) and M.-T. Hipp, Vie de la princesse d’Angleterre (Droz, 1967).

Condition

Overall, excellently preserved copy. Binding very lightly rubbed and lightly stained, a small scratch to one cover; the upper joint fragile. Internally fresh and nearly spotless, with some offsetting from the plates to the adjacent leaves. Ink and graphite annotations to the endpapers as described above. Complete.