LOUVENCOURT (François de, seigneur de Vauchelles).

Ɵ Les Amours and early poetic works. Paris, George Drobet, 1595. In-8, red morocco, triple gilt fillet, ornate spine, repeated floral iron, interior lace, gilt edges on marbling (Trautz-Bauzonnet). First and only edition of this extremely rare collection of poems. This is one of the rarest books I know. [...] I had never seen it in the sales (Viollet-le-Duc). The only copy that we have been able to identify in the public collections is in the BnF, bound in red morocco in the 18th century by La Ferté (former collections of the Duke of La Vallière and the Marquis de Paulmy). Poet born in Amiens, François de Louvencourt (circa 1568/1569-1638), lord of Vauchelles, was a student of Jean des Caurres for his classical studies, then of Cujas during a stay in Bourges in 1587-1589. His family archives indicate that he was a counselor to the King, president-treasurer of France and general of finances in the generality of Picardy. He wrote a translation of the voyages of Francis Drake, a novel entitled Les Amans de Siene, and religious poems. The volume includes 328 pieces according to the enumeration of J. P. Barbier-Mueller, divided into four books: the Amours de l'Aurore (204 pieces), the Amours de Leucothée (40 pieces), the Amours de Mellide (4 pieces), and the Meslanges (80 pieces: odes, stanzas, sonnets, speeches in verse, etc.) The first book is composed of two hundred sonnets to the Aurora, name which he had given to his mistress. In the interval between the first book and the second, it seems that Aurore had been unfaithful to him. [...] Vauchelles expresses his regrets, in the second book, in elegies, of which the second is a small masterpiece of loving pain, of true tenderness, nobly, courageously and simply expressed. The third book is a rhymed short story: it is the adventures of a woman who died of love (Viollet-le-Duc). The edition is dedicated to the princess of Longueville, Catherine of Orleans, dedication in which the poet pronounces himself on the passion of love and says he wants to show that the banks of the Seine and the Loire are not the only places of the kingdom where love is happily sung. On the verso of the last introductory page, a charming portrait of the 26 years old author, finely engraved in intaglio, followed below by a quatrain beginning with "Such is this Louvencourt vray Cephale amoureux". This portrait is missing in the digitized copy of the BnF. A very nice copy, from the libraries of Charles Nodier (1844, n°459), Viollet le Duc (I, 1849, n°320) and Lignerolles (1894, n°1011). It was formerly in an English lemon morocco binding, and was bound by Trautz-Bauzonnet after the Viollet-le-Duc sale. Without the last leaf, blank. J. P. Barbier-Mueller, IV-3, n°47. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°492.