A Memoir of Marie Antoinette, Attired in Sparkling Leather and Gilt And Illustrated as Beautifully as the Book's Queenly Subject

MÉMOIRES DE MADAME CAMPAN SUR LA VIE PRIVÉE DE MARIE-ANTOINETTE.

(BINDINGS - CHAMBOLLE-DURU). (MARIE-ANTOINETTE). CAMPAN, HENRIETTE.

(Paris: L. Carteret, 1910). 218 x 140 mm. (8 5/8 x 5 1/2"). Two volumes. Preface by René Vallery-Radot. No. 69 OF 100 COPIES printed on Japanese Vellum.

SUPERB CRIMSON CRUSHED MOROCCO, GILT, BY CHAMBOLLE-DURU (stamp-signed on front turn-in), covers framed by floral roll with shell cornerpieces, raised bands, spine gilt in compartments with central floral sprig enclosed by volutes, gilt titling, gilt-framed pastedowns, beige moiré silk endleaves, all edges gilt. With decorative paper wrappers bound in. Housed in suede-lined, morocco-lipped, red marbled slipcases. WITH 63 ILLUSTRATIONS, ALL IN TWO STATES, by Adolphe LaLauze and engraved by Léon Boisson, 21 of these full-page plates. ◆A breath of rubbing to leather, but AN EXTREMELY FINE COPY with virtually no signs of use, inside or out.

Printed on luxurious Japanese vellum, charmingly illustrated, and opulently bound, this is an insider's look at the court of Versailles under Louis XVI, authored by a close confidante of the queen. Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Genêt Campan (1752–1822) first came to court as teacher to the daughters of Louis XV, and became a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette when the young princess first arrived from Austria in 1770. She remained in that position until the storming of the Tuileries Palace by revolutionaries in 1792. Her engaging memoir recounts the glittering life that the Dauphine, then Queen, led at Versailles, as well as the terror of the revolution. Though she lost all her material possessions during the Terror, she held onto her life and was able to rebuild her career under Napoleon I, when she became a leader in the education of French girls, heading up a school founded to educate female relatives of recipients of the Legion of Honor. Our bindings come from one of the finest workshops active in France during the Belle Époque. A rough contemporary of, and certainly the equal in technique to, binders like Trautz, Marius Michel père, Lortic, and Cuzin, the elder Chambolle served his apprenticeship under Hippolyte Duru and later formed a partnership with him. Chambolle's son continued the business when his father retired in 1898, and in "Modern Bookbindings," Sarah Prideaux says of her contemporary, "Chambolle most worthily continues the traditions associated with the name of his father. As an interpreter of the past, he has a place apart and almost untouched by the main revolutionary movement that has penetrated nearly every atelier in Paris, and modified, if not overturned, its inherited traditions. To him are confided the classics of former times, which he clothes in the styles appropriate to them, keeping to a simplicity of ornamentation which reveals great taste and feeling for composition." Chambolle has done just that here, creating bindings that would have looked at home on Madame Campan's bookshelf. (ST19332)

Price: $3,250.00