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295 - VERDIER (Antoine, du). Les Omonimes, a satire on the corrupt…
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Estimate €1,200 - €1,500
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Description
VERDIER (Antoine, du). Les Omonimes, a satire on the corrupt morals of this century. [with] La Prosopographie ou Description des personnes insignes, enrichie de plusieurs effigies, & réduite en quatre livres. A precious copy that belonged to Anatole France, bringing together two rare and sought-after works by Antoine du Verdier (1544-1600). Lyon, Antoine Gryphius, 1572, 1573. Two works in one volume, In-4 (245 x 180 mm), in a fine 18th century binding in full red morocco, spine ribbed, mute, decorated with a rich gilt decoration, triple fillet framing. Lovely lozenge florets in the centre of the boards, all edges gilt. Two works: 1. of 12 leaves [following]; 24 pp.n.ch., 520 (i.e. 528) pp. 16 pp. Head-cap a little damaged, rubbing, some marks on the first board, paper a little browned in the margin of the title and the portrait, some marginal marks, the rest fresh and clean. The first and only edition of "Les Omonimes", a remarkable poem in which each pair of lines ends in homonymous rhymes, thus forming a play on puns, in which the author delivers a bitter satire of the mores of his time and deplores the civil wars dividing the kingdom. In an epistle dated Camp, 10 February 1569, Verdier emphasised the singularity of his verse: "At first sight (Reader) this Poem will seem to you unpolished & rough: but when you have considered closely the difficulty of this kind of writing, I assure myself that, excusing the roughness, you will gratify the labour and the invention. For there has been no poet before me who has written so many verses of this kind in succession, in which I have observed the masculine and feminine forms, and not to say the same Omonimus twice. Bound with : First edition of "La Prosopographie", illustrated with a portrait of the author accompanied by his Latin motto Et Marti et Minervae, as well as numerous woodcuts in the text, mostly presented in the form of oval medallions. A veritable "chronicle of the world", the work covers a vast panorama of historical and mythological figures: patriarchs, gods (including Jesus Christ, p. 247), emperors, kings, poets, inventors and great men of letters, including Étienne Dolet, Sébastien Gryphe, Thomas More, Erasmus and Albert Dürer. Verdier's text is notable for its many erudite digressions, covering subjects as varied as the invention of banking in Lyon (p. 491), the definition of comedy and tragedy in the article "Sophocles", and the invention of printing, which he rightly attributes to Gutenberg (p. 469). Antoine du Verdier (1544-1600), King's Councillor in Lyon, humanist scholar and bibliographer, is best known for his Bibliothèque françoise (1585), considered to be the second major national bibliography, following that of La Croix du Maine, published a year earlier in 1584. Provenance: Ex-libris of Anatole France with the Motto "Quid quid erit" (cf. Anatole France bibliophile. Sale of his private library on 9 June 1939). A splendid copy in red morocco.
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About the sale Prestige sale - Antiquarian and collectible books
Auction location
Auction time 06/15/2026 at 2:00 PM
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