Search Results: Authors starting with O from Bruce McKittrick Rare Books

[Geneva]: Henri II Estienne, 1557. Vellum over flexible boards, flat spine.             Editiones Principes of fragmentary Greek historical and geographical texts dealing with, i.a., elephant hunts, Persia, Rome, the Nile, gold mining in Egypt, the Red Sea, Ethiopians and Arabians. Arthur Freeman places Ctesias first among literature's great "travel liars" for his tales of India. Also in first edition are two previously unknown fragments of Appian discovered by Estienne and thirty pages of his notes. In good condition. ¶Renouard, Annales...des Estienne 117,6; Freeman, Bibliotheca fictiva 3 & 8 & no. 5.

Breslau: D. Müller, 1629. Marbled boards (spine defective). Filled with pastoral imagery, these verses play on the name of the estate of the dedicatee, Duke Heinrich Wenzel von Münsterberg-Öls. Second printing, issued the same year as the first (slightly browned). ¶Dünnhaupt, Personalbibliographien zu den Drucken des Barock IV: 3041,105.2.

Paris: Jean-Baptiste Oudry, 1716. CONTEMPORARY GILT BROWN MOROCCO, a wide frame of partly pointillé drawer handles and foliage, in the center THE ARMS OF THE DEDICATEE, MARIE-LOUISE-ÉLISABETH D'ORLÉANS, DUCHESSE DE BERRY joined with those of her deceased husband Charles, spine richly gilt and gilt-lettered.             In January 1716, while in seclusion for the birth - then tragic death - of her second natural child, the twenty-year-old widowed dedicatee, Marie-Louise-Élisabeth d'Orléans, Duchess of Berry (1696-1719), received from the talented and fashionable painter J.-B. Oudry this ingenious suite of picture riddles of love, seduction and morality(!). He created and designed the forty playful prints based on prose and verse solutions of his own composition to amuse and distract the young duchess and her intimates at so difficult a time.             Then much in vogue at the French royal court headed by Philippe II Duke d'Orléans, Regent of France and Marie-Louise-Élisabeth's… Read More

Lyon: S. Gryphe, 1554. CONTEMPORARY WHITE CALF GILT AND PAINTED WITH A DESIGN OF INTERLACING DOUBLE-RULE VINE STRAPWORK AND FOLIAGE (soiled, some wear and loss of paint). The upper right and lower left outer ribbons were painted brown and the outer foliage painted green. The upper left and lower right outer ribbons were left plain. The foliage around the central lozenge was painted blue and the two leaves in the middle painted green; the six spine compartments gilt (worn) and the edges gilt and gauffered with ?tulips. Pocket edition executed in small italic type (69 mm. for 20 lines). The competition was fierce and the market large for this text. The careful work of Moss records fifty-two printings of the Metamorphoses in France from 1496 to 1560 in folio, quarto, octavo and sextodecimo. Gryphe and his heirs account for thirty-one percent of the total and over sixty percent of the small formats editions. That offered here is fashionably clothed in the high style of the time (the front free endleaf… Read More