BORGO (Pietro Battista)

Lot 42
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Estimation :
2500 - 3000 EUR
BORGO (Pietro Battista)
De bello suecico commentarii... Editio ultima figuris aeneis adornata. Leiden, Henri Edelmann, 1643. In-12 of (4) ff. including the frontispiece, 424 pp. red morocco, decoration in the style of Du Seuil, small coat of arms gilt in the centre, spine gilt, edges gilt (contemporary binding). A much sought-after Elzevier edition, printed in large type by Louis Elzevier and decorated with a title-frontispiece and twenty-five finely engraved portraits. (Willems, no. 994. - Rahir, no. 988.) Born in Genoa, Pietro Battista Borgo served in Germany in the Swedish army during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), whose history he retraces here until the death in 1632 of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus. His work was first published in Liège in 1633. A fine copy bearing the arms of Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux (1619-1692), a rare provenance. Born in La Rochelle into a Protestant family, the writer and poet remained famous for his Historiettes, a delicious mixture of anecdotes and uncompromising observations on Parisian society and mores from the time of the last Valois until the reign of Louis XIII. They were published nearly one hundred and fifty years after his death, in 1834-1835, by Louis Monmerqué. (Guigard, Nouvel armorial du bibliophile II, p. 444: the bibliographer stresses that "a large part of the books making up the collection of this piquant anecdote writer have entered the Bibliothèque Nationale.") The volume also bears on the endpapers the repeated signature Maynard, which does not seem to be that of the poet François Maynard (1582-1646). Small trace of worm affecting some letters on folio C11.
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