Beautifully Illustrated by Marillier, in Very Fine
Morocco by One of the Great Binders of the Era

(FRENCH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS). (BINDINGS - THOUVENIN). FÉNELON, FRANÇOIS DE SALIGNAC DE LA MOTHE.

LES AVENTURES DE TÉLÉMAQUE.

(Paris: De l'imprimerie de Didot Jeune, 1790). 248 x 165 mm (9 3/4 x 6 1/2"). Two volumes.

LOVELY EARLY 19TH CENTURY DARK BLUE STRAIGHT-GRAIN MOROCCO, HANDSOMELY DECORATED IN BLIND AND GILT, BY THOUVENIN (signed at foot of the spine of first volume), covers bordered with wide blind leaf roll framed by single gilt fillets and with gilt roundel cornerpieces, raised bands, spines with multiple plain and decorative gilt rules at top and bottom and in compartments featuring decorative interlacing bands in blind and intricate gilt diamond centerpiece with fleuron corners, marbled endpapers, turn-ins and all edges gilt. Engraved portrait tondo on title pages, and 25 FINE ENGRAVED PLATES (with tissue guards), including frontispiece by Hubert after Vivien and plates by de Ghendt, Dupréel, Delvaux, Dambrun, Patas, Baquoy, Masquelier, Langlois, Ponce, and Paquet, after Marillier. Cohen-de Ricci, pp. 386-87; Graesse II, 565; Brunet II, 1215-16. Isolated trivial defects (one gathering with overall faint browning, another lightly foxed), but AN EXCEPTIONALLY FINE COPY OF A BEAUTIFUL SET, the elegant bindings unusually bright and virtually without wear, the margins ample, the plates and text especially fresh, bright, and clean, and with rich impressions of the plates "before letters.".

Fénelon (1651-1715) wrote this Utopian work for Louis XIV's eldest grandson, whom he was employed to tutor. The book was designed to give the future ruler more farsighted political, social, and economic ideas than he might otherwise have met with. Unfortunately, the young man died before he could come to power, and Fénelon fell into disgrace, partly because "Télémaque" reflected badly on the government of Louis. When financial exigencies compelled the painter Pierre-Clémént Marillier (1740-1808) to take up book illustration, his skill and energy, according to Ray, soon earned him "a position in the front rank of book artists." Ray calls Marillier "among the most accomplished" illustrators of the century, and he says--and this would be appropriate for the plates in our volumes--that "nearly all of his designs are characterized by grace, liveliness, and firmness of drawing." Our elegant binding is typical of the best work produced by the celebrated binder Joseph Thouvenin (1779-1834), the eldest of three bookbinder brothers. Ramsden describes Thouvenin as one of the three great French binders of the Empire and Restoration periods (Simier and Purgold are the others), and the Walters Art Gallery catalogue says that "in his heyday, . . . he was the giant among Paris bookbinders." His fame in the lore of binding history was secured when he produced a celebrated retrospective binding for the bibliophile Charles Nodier in 1829, a volume that ever after established the term "fanfare" (taken from the book's title) to describe the distinctive elaborate all-over binding style employed by Nicolas and Clovis Eve and others in France during the last quarter of the 16th and first quarter of the 17th centuries. (ST10187)