Les avantures du Baron du Foeneste, Par Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, Edition Nouvelle, Augmentée de plusieurs Remarques historiques, de l’Histoire secrete de l’Auteur écrite par lui-même, & de la Bibliotheque de Me. Guillaume [...] Tome premier

Full title: Les avantures du Baron du Foeneste, Par Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, Edition Nouvelle, Augmentée de plusieurs Remarques historiques, de l’Histoire secrete de l’Auteur écrite par lui-même, & de la Bibliotheque de Me. Guillaume enrichie de Notes par Mr. *** Tome premier, Contenant la Vie d’Aubigné, & les deux premiers Livres de Fœneste.

First of 2 volumes in 8vo. ff. [2] (blank), [1] (plates), pp. [34], clx, 113, [5] (blank). Contemporary calf, engraved full-page frontispiece, showing Enay and Fœneste. Title  printed in red and black ink. Engraved vignette on title page. Headpieces, engraved initials. Bookplates of Thomas Inman. Seller's notes stamped on p. [2] of cover. On 1st blank recto manuscript note "See Ferriars illustrations of Sterne, 1798 pp. 35-41." Longer manuscript note on verso.

To this edition of D’Aubigné’s early-17th-century satirical dialogues – censured for its ‘négligence’ by J.C. Brunet (Manuel du libraire. Paris, 1860, I, p. 546) – the editor Jacob le Duchat [‘Mr. ***’] added more than two hundred pages of similar contemporary facetiae, including the ‘Inventaire des livres en la bibliotheque de M[aître] Guillaume,’ a list of seventy imaginary titles (II, pp. 327-334), followed by his own ‘Remarques’ (pp. 334-365) explaining the satirical point of most entries. He claims that his text was taken from ‘un vieux Manuscrit tout rongé,’ and that ‘cette Satire est du commencement du dernier siecle’ (p. 334); elsewhere (I, pp. [14–15]) he cites editions of 1604, 1602 (‘moins étendue’), and 1720, and identifies the author as a former apothecary of Louviers, and a famous buffoon at the courts of Henri IV and Louis XIII, known as Guillaume le Marchand, whose name was attached to many anonymous pieces in his time. Brunet, who reprinted the list of seventy titles from this 1729 edition in his essay on imaginary libraries (published as an appendix to Paul Lacroix’s edition of Rabelais’ Catalogue de la bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Saint-Victor (Paris, 1862), pp. 308-312), merely says that it had been printed ‘several times’ before, but if so, no edition, including the present, is cited by W. A. Jackson, Bibliotheca Chimaerica. Cambridge, MA, 1962 or by Roland Folter, Printed in the Mind of Man, 2011.

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