?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,000
Huon de Bordeaux. Les Gestes et Faictz Merveilleux du Noble Huon de Bordeaux.
Paris: Jean Bonfons, [no date, 1543-1568].
Quarto, title page in very good two-color facsimile on recto, text in black in facsimile on verso; illustrated with fourteen text woodcuts (including repeats), title woodcut depicting the arrival of the King of France; washed and trimmed closely, large woodcut printer's device to verso of final leaf; bound in full modern calf, blind-tooled in a period style binding, 7 3/8 x 5 in.
"Thought to be based on Huon d'Auvergne —a hypothetical earlier version that told a much grimmer other-world story— Huon de Bordeaux marks the transition from the epic chanson de geste, based on national history, to the roman d'aventure, or romance. Huon de Bordeaux had a great vogue in England through a prose translation by John Bouchier, Lord Berners, that was printed c. 1534 by Wynkyn de Worde. This was used as a source book by Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and John Keats.
Rare at auction, this copy sold in these rooms in 1985; Worldcat locates three copies worldwide, none in American libraries; Brunet III 382.
