Paris, chez la Veuve de Jean-Baptiste Coignard et Jean-Baptiste Coignard Fils, 1691.
12mo [166 x 91 mm] of (6) ll., 324 pp., (1) bl. l. Small wormhole in the white margin of the first 5 leaves, without the first blank endpaper. Bound in contemporary brown full calf formerly restored, spine ribbed and decorated with gilt fleurons, mottled edges. Joints and spine rubbed. Contemporary binding.
Extremely rare first edition of this tale by Charles Perrault published a few weeks before the first separate edition.
Here is the first edition, with the title bearing the address of the widow and the son of J.B. Coignard. Some copies of this first edition bear the address of J.B. Coignard, others the one of his widow and his son. J.B. Coignard died in 1688 and some of the books printed on the family press in 1690 bear the address of his widow. But many books are still printed with J.B. Coignard’s address until 1697. Thus, the first separate edition of La Marquise de Salusses, published at the end of 1691, is still printed with J.B. Coignard’s address. That’s why it is very difficult to know which of the two title-pages, the one with the printer’s address or the one with his widow and son’s address, was printed before the other. Few copies from the first edition were probably replaced on sale at the end of the year 1691 with a cancel title. But to give the anteriority to one or the other title-page seems difficult.
On August 25th 1691, Father Lavau read at the Académie Française ‘La Marquise de Salusses ou la patience de Grisélidis’, which was welcomed with a lot of applause. The short story in verse by Charles Perrault was published soon after in the 1691 ‘Recueil’ of the Académie, where were also published ‘A Monsieur ** en luy envoyant la Marquise de Salusses’ as well as other texts by him. It was also published separately at Jean-Baptiste Coignard’s in 1691.
Only the separate edition published a few weeks later is described by Tchemerzine and already qualified by him of « extremeley rare » (V, 172).
Only Gumuchian (n°4472), Stoerer and Tannery (n°402) describe the present edition (with J.B. Coignard’s address). « This short story is probably here a first edition » writes Tannery.
The reading of this volume, « completed printing on September 22nd 1691 », that is to say less than a month after the first reading of the text, leaves no doubt.
The account finds its source in Boccaccio’s Décaméron. Published again in 1694, the short story is then followed by two other tales also in verse Peau d’Ane and Les Souhaits ridicules which appear then in first editions.
A precious wide-margined copy preserved in its contemporary full calf binding.
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