Sertorius

Name: Sertorius
SKU: 17483
Author: Pierre Corneille

tragédie

[Amsterdam], Suivant la copie imprimée à Paris, [Daniel Elzevier], 1662.

1 vol. (85 x 145 mm) of 3 leaves, 84 pp. and 3 leaves. Red morocco, covers decorated with a du Seuil-style border with double gilt fillet and fleurons, spine ribbed and decorated with gilt compartments and fleurons, dotted tooling on the bands, gilt fillet on edges, inner lace, gilt edges (binding signed by Dubois d'Enghien-Dooms).

Second edition, and first Dutch edition, following the copy printed in Paris the same year by Augustin Courbé. This edition was printed by Daniel Elzevier. A new edition was issued two years later by Abraham Wolfgang, with a plate, to be included in the collected volume of 1664.

After Oedipe and La Toison d’or, which opened the second part of his dramatic career, Corneille returned to Roman history. He drew from Plutarch the fine episode of Sertorius, first performed at the Théâtre du Marais in Paris on 25 February 1662, before being published in July. Loret, in his Muze historique en vers of the same date, praised its merits: “Depuis huit jours les beaux esprits ne s’entretiennent dans Paris, que de la dernière merveille qu’a produite le grand Corneille, qui, selon le commun récit, a plus de beautez que son Cid, a plus de forces et de graces que Pompée, et que les Horaces, a plus de charmes que n’en a son inimitable Cinna, que l’Oedipe, ny Rodogune, dont la gloire est si peu commune, ny, mesmement, qu’Héraclius; scavoir Sertorius…”

A well-bound copy in a pastiche binding signed by [Hector] Dubois-d’Enghien–[Edmond] Dooms. Having taken over his father’s workshop, Dubois d’Enghien went into partnership in 1921 with Edmond Dooms, a gilder trained at De Samblanx.

From the Chandon de Briailles and Jacques Attali libraries, with bookplates.

Picot 61 (for the first edition) and p. 265; Tchemerzine II, 564 (for the first edition); Dubois d’Enghien (Hector), La Reliure en Belgique au dix-neuvième siècle, pp. 156–159.

#17483

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