Hardcover volume, 8vo, 21.5 x 14.5 cm, bound by Riviere & Son (stamped on fep verso bottom) in full brown calf, boards with triple gilt fillet border and gilt dentelle inside, spine with raised bands, gilt in compartments, black label with gilt lettering, all margins gilt, blue endpapers, bookplate of Arthur Rau pasted to front pastedown (text: Les hommes sont méchants mais leurs livres sont bons / Arthur Rau; signed: E. H. New – A.D. 1922), traces of removed owner’s label to fep recto; printed on laid paper.
Title-page (engraved, in floral frame): LE TEMPLE | DE GNIDE. | Mis en Vers | Par M. Colardeau | {vignette with portrait of Pierre Corneille} | A PARIS | Chez le Jay, Libraire, Rue St. Jacques au dessus de | celle des Mathurins au Grand Corneille ||
Collation: 2 blanks, h.t., engraved t.p. with a portrait of Pierre Corneille, a8, A-E8 F4 (52 leaves), 2 blanks, plus 7 plates by various engravers after Charles Monnet. Pagination: [i] ii-xvi, [1] 2-88 (104 pp).
Ref: MFA (Boston): accession number 37.1747
Catalogue raisonné: Lewine 114, Cohen-DeRicci 245-6.
Contributors:
Charles Monnet (French, 1732 – after 1808) – artist.
Engravers:
Jean Charles Baquoy (French, 1721 – 1777)
Nicolas Delaunay (French, 1739 – 1792)
Isidore Stanislas Helman (French, 1743 – 1806)
Louis Joseph Masquelier (French, 1741 – 1811)
François Denis Née (French, 1735 – 1818)
Nicholas Ponce (French, 1746 – 1831)
Portrait(s) designed by: Guillaume Voiriot (French, 1713 – 1799)
Author: Charles-Pierre Colardeau (French, 1732 – 1776)
Publisher: Edmé-Jean Le Jay (French, 1734 – 1795)
Bookplate artist: Edmund Hort New (British, 1871 – 1931)
Provenance: Arthur Rau (British, 1898 – 1972); his obituary can be found in The Book Collector 1973, vol. 22, n°1, p. 86-89. According to the genealogy service Geni, Arthur Aron Rau was born to Jacob Aryeh Rau and Katharina (Kaethe) Rau, and has a sister Cecilia (Tsipporah) Rosenfelder and a brother Frederick Solomon Rau. He went to Oxford and then joined Maggs Brothers in their Paris establishment. “After some years there, he set up on his own, returning to England at the outbreak of the Second World War to be a schoolmaster for ten years”. In 1949 he returned to Paris and retired in 1963, “and his last years he happily spent in Wensleydale…”. All he published during his lifetime were two catalogues, Livres Rares Et Anciens. Manuscrits et Autographes. — Paris: Arthur Rau, 1932-3 and Cinquante Tres Beaux Livres Avec Un Appendice. — Paris: Arthur Rau, 1933. He also contributed to The Book Collector.
