(CHARLES I) — Jean Louis Guez de Balzac

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 USD

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Description

Les Oeuvres. Rouen: chez Jean Berthelin, 1645
Ink, paper and cow

2 vols. small 8vo (6 3/8 x 4 in.; 160 x 100 mm.). Manuscript note "Dum spiro spero" signed "CR" on first blank of each volume. Title-pages probably washed, light foxing. Contemporary black morocco gilt; joints rubbed.

Provenance

King Charles I — Bristow's Kentish Library (then Bristow & Cowtan), Canterbury (three eighteenth century bookplates) — acquisition: H.D. Lyon, 1991

Catalogue Note

Charles I's copy.

A few copies from Charles I's library with his autograph motto "Dum spiro spero" [While I breathe, I hope] and his initials "CR" are known. According to Sholto and Reuben Percy in The Percy Anecdotes (London, 1825, p. 98), Charles I wrote it down on his copy of Shakespeare's Second Folio. He gave it to Sir Henry Herbert, the night before his execution.
Also, a copy of Davila's History of Civill Warres in France, 1647, has the same mention (See Thomas Thorpe, Catalogue of an extensive collection of books... including a further selection from the very curious library of the Rev. Thomas Baker. London, 1830, p. 82, #5412).
The Guez de Balzac copy as well as the Davila show Charles the First had some of his books when he was in prison (1647-1649).