MEMOIRS of PHILIPPE DE COMMYNES by KINSER/FRANCE/2 BOOKS/SCARCE 1969 1st

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THE MEMOIRS OF PHILIPPE DE COMMYNES. EDITED BY SAMUEL KINSER. TRANSLATED BY ISABELLE CAZEAUX. VOLUME ONE & TWO. TWO BOOKS. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1969. First Edition. Scarce. VOLUME ONE: Book One: The War for the Public Good, 1465 / Book Two: The Wars against Liege and the interview at PEronne, 1466-1468 / Book Three: The War over the Somme River towns, 1470-1472 / Book Four: The Franco-English War of 1475 and the betrayal of the Count of Saint-Pol / Book Five: the fall of Burgundy, 1476-1477. VOLUME TWO: Book Six: French Expansion in Burgundy and Louis XI's Last Years, 1477-1483 / Book Seven: The French Invasion of Italy, 1494-1495 / Book Eight: The French Retreat from Italy and Charles VIII's Last Years, 1495-1498. A set of two scarce and fascinating books. Published more than 45 years ago, this book has long been out of print. Such a nice set is not likely to come up for sale again soon on ebay. From the Dust Jacket: "The last complete English translation on Philippe de Commnes' Memoirs was published in 1855. This book is the first volume of a two-volume work that provides a new translation of the French statesman's work great and also offers in a lengthy introduction a fresh assessment of Commynes' thought. Philippe de Commynes was a Burgundian nobleman who deserted the Duke of Burgundy to enter the service of Louis XI of France, and eventually became Louis' mos intimate adviser. He was thus in a position to describe how the foundations of France's unity and future greatness were re-established by the king, and generations of historians have praised his analysis of the struggle between Louis and Charles the Bold of Burgundy for its accuracy and objectivity. However, Samuel Kinser explains how in the last ten years students of Commynes and his times have demolished the myth of Commynes' reliability as a historian, and he effectively demonstrates how the importance of Commynes' work is related not to its factual accuracy but to its enlargement of our sense of the historical situation as a whole. The volumes contains maps, chronological tables, footnotes, a bibliography (in Volume One), and an index (in Volume Two) to serve as guides to the student and general reader. Each book of the Memoirs is introduced by an illustration and a caption that relates the picture to the text. The style used by Isabelle Cazeaux in translating Commynes' fifteenth-century phrases into twentieth-century English, like the illustrations in these volumes, conveys in a remarkable fashion what Commynes felt as well as what he meant. The translation avoid mannered archaisms and modern avoids mannered archaisms and modern idioms equally in order to come as close as possible to the straightforward method of narration employed by Philippe de Commnes in the extraordinary Memoirs." According to Wikipedia: "Philippe de Commines (or de Commynes or "Philippe de Comines"; Latin: Philippus Cominaeus; 1447 – 18 October 1511) was a writer and diplomat in the courts of Burgundy and France. He has been called "the first truly modern writer" (Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve) and "the first critical and philosophical historian since classical times" (Oxford Companion to English Literature). Neither a chronicler nor a historian in the usual sense of the word, his analyses of the contemporary political scene are what made him virtually unique in his own time. After his release, Commines was exiled to his estate at Dreux, where he began to write his Mémoires. (This title was not used until an edition of 1552.) By 1490, however, he was recovering his position at court and was in the service of King Charles VIII of France. Charles never allowed him the privileged position he had held under Louis, and he was once again used as an envoy to the Italian states. However, his personal affairs were still problematic, and his right to some of the possessions given him by Louis was subject to legal challenges. In 1498 (fifteen years after the death of Louis XI of France), Commines's work was complete... read more

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