RONSARD (Pierre de).

Ɵ The Works. Rédigées en sept tomes, Reveuës, & augmentées. Paris, Gabriel Buon, 1578. 7 volumes in 5 volumes in-16, blue morocco, gilt foliage medallion in the center of a small repeated iron (floral button), ornate spine, inner lace, gilt edges on marbling (Trautz-Bauzonnet). Fifth collective edition, it is of a capital importance in the work of Ronsardi and some thought to say that it represented the apogee of his art (Chamard). The edition contains 240 unpublished pieces according to J. P. Barbier-Mueller, and not 238 as counted by Laumonier in his Tableau chronologique. The new poems are mainly in volume I in the Amours: it is there that appear for the first time the pieces Sur la mort de Marie and those of the Sonnets pour Hélène of which the famous sonnet Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle. The poet, in front of the success met by his collective editions, decided to deliver to the readers by this only channel, without preliminary publication of a separate collection, two hundred and forty unpublished poems, of which some count among his most beautiful verses: the two books of the Sonnets for Hélène. According to his biographer Binet, Ronsard considered the Sonnets à Hélène as the crowning achievement of his entire work (Ducimetière). This edition is one of the rarest to find complete. It is decorated with woodcut portraits of Ronsard, Muret, the commentator of the Amours, and Charles IX. Remarkable copy, in an elegant morocco binding decorated on the boards with medallions of foliage. It comes from the libraries of Count de Fresne (1893, n°227), George Dubois, Szaniecki (I, 1974, n°123). In volume IV, folio 3 is in first state (it is not numbered). J. P. Barbier-Mueller, II-1, n°57. - N. Ducimetière, Mignonne..., n°18. - Cat. Ronsard : la trompette et la lyre, n°268. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°761.