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Are you interested in this item? This item is up for auction at Catawiki. Please click on "respond to advert" (orange button) to get redirected to the Catawiki website. Catawiki’s goal is to make special objects universally available. Our weekly auctions feature thousands of unusual, rare, and exceptional objects you won’t find in just any store. First posthumous edition. These three dialogues, written between 1681 and 1686 and inspired by Socratic dissertations, hold an important place in the history of critical thought in the 17th century. Their aim is the study of the means and ends of eloquence. Fénelon affirms the need for an intimately persuasive style, full of delicacy and feeling, which aims to obtain a real interior renewal, against any artificial literary appearance (Laffont-Bompiani). These dialogues were first published in the press by the Chevalier Ramsay, one of Fenelon's close friends who entrusted him with his papers.
This work is followed by the Letter written to the Academy on eloquence, poetry, history, etc. and various pieces: Project to complete the Dictionary, Project of a French grammar, Project of a rhetoric, Project of a Treaty on tragedy, Project of a Treaty on history, Response to an objection on these various projects...
This edition, printed by Jacques Estienne, belongs to the first edition with the page numbers 159 to 168 repeated. This pagination error was corrected in the second edition printed by Delaulne.
Contemporary bound copy, full glazed Havana calfskin, ornate ribbed spine, compartmentalized gilt fleurons, mosaic pieces. Golden number stamped on the top corner; of the first course. Casters on the cups. Golden slices.
Condition: Well-preserved binding, slight defects: rubbing on crowns and edges of covers. Small wormhole in the second bit. Two lower corners. a little pierced. Cool interior.
Beautiful Provenance: ex-libris [Jean de La Fontaine Toqué]: an ogival cartouche. In the center, on a blue background, we read: the epitaph of the poet, "Jean went away as he had come", and the monogram J. F. T. [Jean de La Fontaine Toqué] debruising on the whole. Around, the caption: "It's my infatuation"; at the bottom, two intertwined Cs.
This is Charles Marie Gabriel Cousin (1822-1894), French bibliophile, Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France in 1883.
In 1843, he was admitted as a supernumerary to the Ministry of Public Instruction and in 1846, he entered the administration of the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Nord. He was appointed Deputy Chief Inspector there in 1867 and became operations secretary in December 1890, when he retired.
He took leave during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and commanded a battalion of 2,400 men, which he formed with volunteers from company personnel to provide protection for the railway. To thank him, the Compagnie du Nord assigned him an apartment at 20 rue de Dunkerque, where he began to collect books and luxury items. He calls it his “Attic”. He calls himself "Le Toqué".
In 1891, he was forced to part with a large part of his collection. He died 3 years later in Pont-à-Mousson.
- two other ex-libris including one with gilded arms on a piece of red leather pasted on the first endpaper; another on the back (crawling lion holding a "Libro Liber" coat of arms.
Francois de Salignac de La Mothe Fenelon
Dialogues on eloquence in general, and on that of the pulpit in particular with a letter written to the Académie françoise.?
Paris, Jacques Estienne, 1718
in-12 (16.5 x 10 cm); 409pp. 1f.
Subject: Fenelon Speech Eloquence EO 1718 Ex of Charles Marie Gabriel Cousin Freemasonry Grand Orient 67350069
