BOAISTUAU Pierre.
Histoires prodigieuses extraictes de plusieurs fameux autheurs, grecs & latins, sacrez & prophanes divisées en six tomes.
Le premier par P. Boaistuau: Le 2. par C. de Tesserant: Le 3. par F. de Belleforest: Le 4. par Rod. Hoyer: Le 5. traduit du latin de M. Arnauld Sorbin Evesque de Neuers, par F. de Belleforest: Et le sixiesme recueilly par I. D. M. de diuers autheurs anciens & modernes.
Paris. Chez la Veuve Guillaume Cavellat au mont S. Hilaire, au Pelican. 1597–1598.
2 volumes, 16mo, 82 x 113 mm.
Volume 1: (10) ff., 191 pp. – (3) ff., 120 pp., (2) ff.
Volume 2: 372 pp., (2) ff. – 80 pp., (2) ff. – (2) blank ff. – 160 pp. – 91 pp., (3) ff.
Late 18th- or early 19th-century bindings in glazed fawn calf. Smooth spines with gilt decoration in the grotesque style. Gilt title label lettered with a type-holder, on a black ground, with volume dates. Triple fillet border on the covers. Gilt fillet on the edges of the boards. Gilt roll on the turn-ins. Marbled paper in the so-called "shell" or "snail" pattern, notably with a green pigment characteristic of the period 1775–1790. Gilt edges.
The Histoires prodigieuses contain a curious digest of every kind of canard and prodigious tale, monsters, demons, sorcerers, rains of blood, signs appearing in the sky above the principal cities of France, floods, etc., drawn from ancient (Greek and Latin) and modern authors, and arranged in six "tomes" (or books) attributed to different contributors. This book is an essential compendium for the study of Renaissance teratology, containing the whole bestiary and catalogue of monsters and malformed beings typical of the 16th century.
This edition is illustrated with 108 charming and very finely cut woodcuts, including a folding figure (a magic knife) in the sixth tome, 8 printer's devices (6 on the titles, 2 repeated at the end of tomes), initials and tailpieces. Tomes 1 and 6 are dated 1598, the other four 1597.
This armorial bookplate belongs to the Le Vicomte family (spelt here Le Visconte), an important house of the Norman nobility.
Brunet I, col. 983; Graesse I, p. 444.
Condition: Restoration to one of the spine ends; margins a little short. Otherwise in superb condition.
