Hélisenne de CRENNE (Marguerite Briet, known as). Les Œuvres... A sçavoir, Les angoisses douloureuses qui procedent d'amours. Les Epistres familieres & invectives. Le songe de ladicte Dame. Le tout reveu & corrigé de nouveau par elle. In-16, black morocco, gilt coat of arms at center of boards, 5-rib spine decorated with small angular gilt fleurons ( Binding circa 1700). Brun, 163 // Brunet, II-415 // Cioranescu, 7102 // Olivier, 799. (175f. of 176, the last blank missing here) / a-z8, A-X8 / 68 x 117 mm. Sixth edition of Œuvres d'Hélisenne de Crenne, bound with the arms of the Countess de Verrue. Marguerite Briet, born around 1510 in Picardy and died around 1560, married Philippe Fournel, seigneur of Du Cresne, before separating from him in 1552. It was therefore under her married name Crenne that she published her novels and epistles, including Les Angoysses douloureuses is the most important. The Œuvres, comprising the three main writings of Hélisenne de Crenne, namely The Angoisses douloureuses, the Epistres familieres and Songe, were first published together in 1543 by Charles L'Angelier, without illustration. Étienne Groulleau subsequently published five editions (1550, 1551, 1553, 1555 and ours in 1560), all illustrated with 8 woodcuts in the text for Les Angoisses douloureuses. Copy with the arms of the Comtesse de Verrue. Jeanne-Baptiste d'Albert de Luynes was born in 1670 and married the Count of Verrue in 1683. After long refusing the advances of the Duke of Savoy Victor-Amédée II, she became his mistress and ruled his court until she fled Turin and settled in Paris in 1700. Widowed in 1704 after the death of her husband in the battle of Hochstaedt, she opened her hotel on rue du Cherche-Midi to intellectuals and literati, and brought together the court and the finest minds of the time in her salon. Witty and well-educated, she turned her hotel into a veritable museum, filled with paintings, antiques and objets d'art; every year, she devoted 100,000 books to her library (Larousse). A patroness of poets and philosophers, she lavished so many entertainments, dinners and parties with great generosity that they earned her the nickname of Dame de volupté. She died in 1736, leaving behind a library of over 18,000 volumes, most of them bound in her coat of arms, which was sold the following year. A very fine copy that subsequently passed through the Gaignat, Brunet, Marigues de Champ-Repus, Hoe and Cortlandt Bishop libraries. Minimal rubbing to spine ends. Small restoration in the inner margin of the title, a few ink stains on the first 2 leaves and lack in the upper margin of the last leaf. Provenance: Claude(? faded manuscript bookplate on title dated 1613), Comtesse de Verrue (arms, sale in 1737, no. 253), Louis-Jean Gaignat (? in fine, April 10, 1769, no. 2501, no mention of arms), Jacques-Charles Brunet (April 20-24, 1868, no. 540), Eugène Marigues de Champ-Repus (bookplate), Robert Hoe (bookplate, II, January 8, 1912, no. 933) and Cortlandt F. Bischop (bookplate, I, April 5-8, 1938, no. 519).