BUSSY-RABUTIN, Roger de (1618-1693). Histoire amoureuse des Gaules.Liège [i.e. Brussels: Elzevier, 1665].

The probable first edition of Bussy-Rabutin’s notorious updating of Petronius, copy with distinguished provenance.Bussy-Rabutin’s roman à clef featured caustic portraits of his cousin Madame de Sévigné, the Prince of Condé, and many other notable contemporaries. Its publication cost the great libertine a year in the Bastille, followed by over a decade’s confinement to his own estate. In just two years after it first appeared, the work went through twelve editions; the standard bibliographies sometimes contradict each other, but Willems’s comprehensive survey of Elzevier imprints is categorical that this is the first (“d’une évidence incontestable”). Brunet I, 1422; Cioranescu 17081; Tchemerzine I, 153; Willems Elzeviers542.

Two parts in one volume, 12mo (137 x 75mm). Maltese cross type ornament on the title (without the final blank in part 2). Blue morocco gilt by Trautz-Bauzonnet (spine lightly rubbed). Provenance: Armand Bertin (1801-1854; his sale, J. Techener, Paris, 4 May 1854, no. 1241) – Félix Solar (1815-1871; his sale, J. Techener, 19 Nov. 1860, no. 2035) – Louis Leboeuf de Montgermont (1841-1918) – Eugène Marigues de Champ Repus (b. 1828; his sale, Hotel Drouot, 24-25 Jan. 1893, no. 242) – Jacques Vieillard.