Massillon

1809 · réf. 208059 — Paris: Renouard 1809. Premiere Edition. VG light foxing to frontis and title-page and most other pages. French contemporary full crimson straight-grain morocco panels with elaborate boarders with gilt bees in the four inner corners facing the Stylized gilt "N" with gilt crown over top of it edges of covers with fine hatchwork at corners and straight gilt lines between spine in 6 compartments with exquisite gilt tooling and gilt pointille tooling and radiating quadrant leaves the lower compartment with the binder name BEL. P. BOZERIAN JEUNE gilt Greek key borders inside gilt edges.Portrait of Massillon engraved by Augustin de Saint-Aubin. 390 pp. Text in French. An exquisite binding. A very similarly bound copy of this book bound by Bozerian sold at Anderson Galleries in 1939 in Part 4 of The Courtlandt Bishop Library. This copy has all indications of having been bound by Bozerian for Napoleon who was known as a voracious reader. Jean-Claude Bozérian and his younger brother François Bozérian were the leading binders of the First Empire and both worked for Napoleon. The elder Bozérian won the bookbinding medal of the Paris 1801 exhibition and was a busy publisher and bookseller as well. A manuscript invoice for binding work to Napoleon was sold at Christie's in 2005 for work that was performed in 1802. Renouard unknown