LIVES of GALLANT LADIES/GOLDEN COCKEREL/ROBERT GIBBINGS SIGNED/RARE 1924 $150+

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LIVES of GALLANT LADIES/GOLDEN COCKEREL/ROBERT GIBBINGS SIGNED/RARE 1924 $150+THE LIVES OF GALLANT LADIES. BY PIERRE DE BOURDEILLE SEIGNEUR & ABBOT OF BRANTOME. VOLUME I & II. TRANSLATED OUT OF THE FRENCH BY H.M. & EMBELLISHED WITH WOODCUTS BY ROBERT GIBBINGS. TWO BOOKS. England : Golden Cockerel Press, Privately Printed for Subscribers Only, 1924. Signed by Robert Gibbings. Limited Edition. First Edition, thus. Rare.A handsome scarce set of two solid and attractive large books published by the famous Golden Cockerel Press. With great illustrations. Notably confrontational due to its early and then-imflamatory portrayal of homosexuality and female genitalia, the works were originally published in the Seventeenth Century, and are here embellished with platees by Robert Gibbings. Signed by the Robert Gibbings, on the colophon note card laid in. Published more than 90 years ago, this edition is now long out of print and hard to find, selling for $150 to $250From the colophon note card: "THIS IS TO CERTIFY that the Edition of Brantome's 'Lives of Gallant LAdies,' printed privately at The Golden Cockerel Press and issued to Subscribers in July, 1924, is strictly limited to the following numbers, which include all copies whether for sale or presentation: 625 sets on rag paper; 75 sets on Dutch Hand-made paper; and 18 sets on English Hand-made paper. The type was distributed immediately after printing and the blocks destroyed. Robert Gibbings, Director, Golden Cockerel Press. 17th July, 1924"From the Preface: "THE GREAT CELEBRITY OF THIS WORK, ITS recognition as a classic of French Literature, not only in France but in all civilized countries, gives rise to the question, what is the characteristic for which it is so valued; is it historical, for example, or moral or philosophic, or is it purely literary? It is a work not easily classified, there are objections to including it under any of these four heads; which, however, cover between them all important productions of the human mind. Yet no work can be called unimportant which is received into the most exclusive society, bearing the honourable name of the French Classics; so we cannot feel that we have arrived at a proper appreciated of Brantome, or have understood the reason of his celebrity, until we discern in him the characteristic value of one of these four classes. It is usually presumed in such a case, that is to say, when the value of a work is felt to be general rather than particular, that it belongs to the class described as belles letters or pure literature; but with all our admiration of the author, we cannot find in his prose any such style or quality as would justify its being classed under this head. It is true that Professor Saintsbury, in his History of French Literature, has written: 'Brantome was emphatically an ecrivain (unscholarly and Italianised as his phrase sometimes appears, if judged by the standards of a sever age) and some of the best passages from his works are among the most striking examples of French prose.' But is that an opinion at all, containing as it does-contradicted within contradiction? it deserves to become the classic example of the non-committal statement. Can a man be a literary artist who has no scholarship? and if he has no scholarship can his French be Italinised, which rather suggests an excess of scholarship? We prefer to side with M. Doumic, who writes in his little manual of French Literature: 'Brantome is no way concerned with literature; he sometimes corrects an error of fact, but never of language; he has no writer.' Truly a case of doctors differing! But these is an important witness yet to be heard, & that is Brantome himself, who repeatedly declares, no less plainly than M. Doumic, that he is no writer; he pleads that he was a soldier who has never been trained in the art of letters, a preliminary that the French have always been eccentric enough to think necessary. His life was devoted to action, when he was crippled by an accident toward the end of it, his activity took the form of p... read more

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