CHALON, Renier

Documents and historical particularities on the Catalogue of the Count of FORTSAS. Work dedicated to the bibliophiles of all countries Mons Emm. Hoyois 1857 Large in-8°, 222 pp. decorated with fleurons, vignettes and typographical drawings. Printed on blue paper. Bound with : Catalog d'une très-riche mais peu nombreuse collection de livres provenant de la bibliothèque de feu Mr le Comte J.-N.-A. Fortsas. Mons, Typography of Em. Hoyois. In-8°, 16 pp. 4th edition; corrected and enlarged. 1863. In-8°, 16 pp. on cream paper. Contemporary binding in 3/4 morocco. Joint : Société des Bibliophiles belges séant à Mons, LXXVe Anniversaire. Mons, Léon Dequesne, 1912. In-12°, 115 pp, contains a beautiful portrait and the biography of Renier Chalon. Beautifully bound in marbled calf, gilt fleurons on the spine, gilt fillet around the boards, inner lace, marbled endpapers, pages untrimmed. + Jahrburh für Bücher-Kunde und - Liebhaberei. Berlin, Max Harrwitz 1912. Edition that reproduces a.o. the Catalogue of the Fortsas collection (set: 3 vols.) During the course of July 1840, the main bibliographers and bibliophiles and the main booksellers in Belgium and France received the catalog of a book sale that was to take place in Binche on August 10. A notice specified that the Count of Fortsas, the late collector, only admitted to his shelves works unknown to all bibliographers, and that he expelled from them, whatever the cost, any specimen that he happened to find reported elsewhere. With the exception of 3 numbers, out of 52, all these unica were imaginary, as was the count of Fortsas [...] Apart from the scholar Polain, who finally sniffed out the deception, all the recipients took the affair seriously, and Chalon was the first one to be astonished [...] The curator of the Royal Library of Brussels insisted on an exceptional credit for the acquisition of certain numbers, 34 to be exact. He finally obtained satisfaction, except for 7 numbers that the minister judged too obscene for a public bibliography." Ref. Dictionnaire des farces et attrapes, pp. 234-237; De Cattelay: Renier Chalon alias Fortsas. Un érudit malicieux au mitan du XIXe siècle (2008); Jean-Népomucène-Auguste Pichauld, comte de Fortsas et Renier Chalon. Excerpt from the review "Le Livre et l'Estampe", 1957 (the latter enclosed)