La Sepmaine, Ou Création du Monde

DU BARTAS Guillaume de Saluste. La Sepmaine, Ou Création du Monde.

Paris, Jean Feurier, 1578.

In-4 (227 x 165 mm): [5] ff., 224 pp., [3] ff. Full brown morocco decorated with empty irons mosaicked in fawn morocco, gilt fillet framing the covers, arms stamped in the center, ribbed spine decorated with the arms, boxes framed in fawn morocco, title, author and date in gilt, counterguards lined with fawn morocco framed by a gilt fillet. Pastiche of a fanfare binding from the end of the 16th century accompanied by its cardboard case (Plumelle).

Original edition.
Very rare first edition of the great poet Guillaume Salluste Du Bartas, whose didactic epic in verse of the biblical story of Genesis presented here had an immense success throughout Europe. This success is mainly due to the use of Alexandrines as well as the mixture of styles, particularly innovative for the time, which are the epic, scientific, religious and didactic poetry.

Like the editions that followed, all the 16th century editions are rare (Labarère 498).

The original edition presented here was described in the Bulletin du Bibliophile (issue III) of 1983 - as being type B of which only 2 copies were known at the time of the article. Today, 9 are listed in public libraries (USTC 2608). Type B is recognizable by the presence of the sonnet on the back of the leaf Au Lecteur , signed with the initials "JDCH." (Joseph du Chesne) as well as the typographical error on page 223 incorrectly printed "323".

The book comes from the Jean-Paul Barbier Mueller Library (1930-2016). A great collector of objects from Africa and Southeast Asia, he was also a knowledgeable bibliophile and a great specialist in 16th century poetry and history.