Crebillon le Fils, M. de — Le Sopha. Conte Moral

Bruxelles, Librairie universelle de J. Rozez, 1869. First Edition. Hardcover. Size: 8vo 8" - 9" tall. Sturdy, attractive, tightly bound, internally clean hardcover copy, with unbruised tips, neat and tidy paste-downs; not ex-library, with neither highlighting nor underlining. French language text. No. 76 of 100 copies printed on fine papier de Holland. Tall octavo in format, 358 pp. Full leather bindings, gilt fillet borders, gilt dentelles, marbeled endpapers, four raised bands, gilt lettering on spine. Binding has the initials CP. Both contents and binding are fine and lovely. The previous owner of the tome, Mr. Richard L. Press of Richard L. Press Fine Art Books, has written a note, as follows: "This is the large paper copy of this celebrated work in an initialed binding. The regular edition is much smaller in format." "For Le Sopha (1742) he was exiled from Paris for three months. In this work Amanzei relates various scandalous encounters he witnessed from a previous incarnation, his soul inhabited a sofa . . . Crebillon Fils used to be dismissed as a minor licentious author . . . he now attracts a more appreciative critical attention. His style, always chaste as to vocabulary, is complex and relies on implication and sousentendus. The works themselves are often morally ambivalent. While he ridicules promiscuous women and rakes, the scenes of libertinage are written with an engaging zeal" (from the Oxford Companion to French Literature).Member, I.O.B.A., C.B.A., and adherent to the highest ethical standards. . . . Near Fine