De L’Imitation de Jesus-Christ
KEMPIS], [Thomas A.
Traduction nouvelle. Dediee a Madame La Duchesse de Bourgogne. Troisieme Edition [text in French throughout].
Published: Jean-Baptiste Coignard Paris, 1706
Stock code: 8065
Price: £386.00
8vo., with a fine woodcut frontispiece, woodcut title-vignette, and 4 fine woodcut head-pieces in the text (one prefacing each book of the work), frontispiece and title very lightly age-stained; handsomely bound in full calf, back with five raised bands, second compartment with leather label lettered in gilt, all other compartments ruled and tooled in blind with a floral spray, new endpapers to style, speckled fore-edges, a bright, crisp copy.
Third edition of the prose translation by Francois Mace (1640?-1721), first published in 1698 with a second edition the following year.The frontispiece is unsigned. BnF attributes the headpieces of Books I, II and possibly III to Jean Mariette (1660-1742). The work is prefaced by the unsigned dedication to the Duchess de Bourgogne [Marie-Adelaide de Savoie], contents of the four books, Approbation de Monsieur Coursier, Theologal de Paris, and Approbation de Monsieur Pillot, Docteur de Sorbonne & grand Penitencier de Tournay. The work is completed by litanies de Jesus-Christ, de Saint-Sacrement, de la Vierge, oraisons.Two of the four spirited head-pieces are captioned in Latin; p.161 is misprinted 147.Jean-Baptiste Coignard was printer to the King and to the Academie Francaise.Very scarce.