Petit in-12 (153 × 91 mm). Title in red and black with engraved vignette, (8), 223, (25) pp., complete with the publisher’s catalogue at end. Engraved copperplate portrait frontispiece of Henriette d’Angleterre after G. Schouten, often lacking and present here in a clear, well-preserved impression, with an additional engraved portrait inserted. Red Jansenist morocco by Pierre-Paul Duru, signed and dated “DURU 1860,” spine with five raised bands, compartments gilt, gilt-ruled turn-ins, marbled endpapers, edges gilt over marbling.
First edition, posthumous, and the first appearance in print of Madame de La Fayette’s important historical account of Henriette d’Angleterre, daughter of Charles I of England and duchess of Orléans.
Provenance: Joseph Renard (1822–1882), Lyon industrialist and bibliophile, with bookplate and manuscript acquisition note; sold Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 1881 (lot 1431); later in the library of Louis Masurier.
Condition: Very good. Binding lightly rubbed and with minor surface wear, including a small scratch to one cover; upper hinge slightly fragile. Internally fresh, with only occasional minor spotting. A well-preserved and attractive copy.
History & Legacy
A particularly appealing and well-documented copy, complete with the engraved frontispiece and the 25-page publisher’s catalogue, and bound in refined red Jansenist morocco by Duru. The volume preserves explicit manuscript evidence of acquisition for the Lyon bibliophile Joseph Renard and later passed into the library of Louis Masurier.
Of note are contemporary pencil annotations to the front endleaves citing bibliographical authorities (including Le Petit and Tchemerzine), as well as a manuscript note recording acquisition through a Paris bookseller identified as “Louveau,” situating the purchase within the formation of Renard’s library. Also preserved is an early twentieth-century antiquarian description referring to the copy as a bel exemplaire.
Although bearing an Amsterdam imprint, the edition has long been considered—following Brunet—likely to have been printed in France, reflecting the common early eighteenth-century practice of issuing politically sensitive works under foreign imprints. The association with Michel-Charles Le Cène situates the book within the wider network of French-language publishing beyond the Paris trade.
Written in the later seventeenth century but withheld from publication during the author’s lifetime owing to its sensitive treatment of court politics and dynastic tensions, the work circulated privately in manuscript before its eventual publication in 1720. Closely related in method to La Princesse de Clèves (1678), it combines court memoir, political observation, and literary portraiture, and remains one of the most important contemporary accounts of the early reign of Louis XIV.
