Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

BAUDE DE LA CROIX (ed). ETRENNES DE PARNASSE. Avec mélanges de littérature françoise et étrangere, par M. Baude de la Croix. Année 1790. A Paris: Chez Belin, MDCCXC [1790].  SOLD

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12mo, pp. 12, [12] calendar, 216; printed entirely on blue paper; occasional browning but largely clean and crisp; in contemporary red morocco, boards with triple fillet border in gilt; flat spine tooled in gilt with green lettering-pieces, all edges gilt; a few marks, but still a handsome copy.

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A lovely copy, printed throughout on blue paper, of this poetical almanac published as part of a series that had begun in 1770. 

 

Containing epigrams, patriotic verses ‘sur l’heureuse révolution arrivée au mois de Juillet’, short stories and vignettes, translations from Italian and Greek, a poem on taxation, anecdotes, and more, this volume does not, as the avertissement makes clear, feel under any obligation to ape previous volumes in the series. In particular, the editor is keen to include works from Asia, whose moral lessons are often, he believes, ‘plus heureux que celle des auteurs européens’, so we find several anonymous pieces with titles such as ‘Moralité Asiatique’ and ‘Anecdote Chinoise’ to go alongside translations from Tibullus, verse adaptations of Helvétius, and more. 

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OCLC records just the BnF copy, although it also notes a copy at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam of pp. iv, 240, 12. 

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