Paris, de l’imprimerie de Monsieur ; Et se vend chez Théophile Barrois, 1788. Avec approbation et privilège du roi.
8vo [193 x 122 mm.] with xvi pp., 582 pp., (5) ll., 6 plates in full page (including one next to the p. 82) and 3 folded plates. Full light brown marbled roan, blind-stamped fillets on the covers, spine ribbed decorated with a repeated cynegetic pattern, red edges. Contemporary cynegetic binding.
Very rare complete first edition, because printed at the writer’s expenses. It was missing from du Verne’s cynegetic book collection.
Huzard 5079.
“xvi preliminary pp.; 582 pp.: (5) ll. (approval, privilege, plates explanation, errata); 8 plates (6 plates of crowsbows and 2 plans) copper-engraved, including 3 folding plates; plus a 9th (not numbered) in front of p. 82: symbols of the gunners from Paris ; 2 vignettes on wood at the beginning of each part.
Complete first edition. The name of the writer can be read in the approval and privilege.
This book is not only the first French book devoted exclusively to the hunting rifle and the gun hunting, but it is also the first treatise on hunting which devotes an important study to the Waterfowl. The section IV “De la Chasse des oiseaux aquatiques” occupies 502 à 582. ” (Thiébaud, 621-622).
“Magné de Marolles, bodyguard and writer, served for some time in the king’s military house. Pushed by his taste for literature and for bibliographical research, he withdrew from the service, settled his residence in Paris, and died there around 1792, old of over 60 years of age.”
“This treatise is valued; the writer has worked on it constantly, and, when he died, a copy was found covered in important notes and additions.”
“This book seems to deserve a favorable reception from the Amateurs de la Chasse. The Author, M. Magné de Marolles, is already known from a little treatise on the same subject, entitled ‘Essai sur la Chasse au fusil’, printed in 1781. The success of this Essay must make an advantageous presumption of the complete Treatise he is publishing today, which supposes from its Author, knowledge which can only be acquired with a long practice. There are, moreover, the details of several little-known Huntings, & which have not yet been described, & curious and interesting researches, even for Readers with no taste for Hunting.” (Mercure de France, 1788, pp. 92-93).
The copy is decorated with 9 plates intaglio including 3 folding plates.
A really beautiful copy covered with an attractive cynegetic binding.
Marcel Jeanson’s copy, in simple pigskin was sold 2 500 €, 30 years ago, remarkable auction for this era (Réf : Sotheby’s, mars 1987, n° 385).
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