Catalogue d'une collection de livres de la bibliotheque de feu M. le Comte de Fortsas, Mons, 1840, marbled boards

FORTSAS, COMTE DE

Catalogue d’une très-riche mais peu nombreuse collection de livres provenant de la bibliothèque de feu M.r le Comte J.-N.-A. de Fortsas, dont le vente sera à Binche, le 10 août 1840, à onze heures du matin, en l'étude et par le ministère de M.e Mourlon, Notaire, rue de l'Eglise, n.o 9. Mons: Em. Hoyois, 1840

8vo (202 x 127mm.), [4], 12pp., vignette on title-page, with the one-page printed "Avis" announcing the cancellation of the sale (with an official Hainault "Annonces et avis" ink stamp) bound at end, old marbled boards with a later leather spine, with a 2-page near-contemporary manuscript description of the hoax on the front flyleaf

A FAMOUS HOAX perpetrated by Renier Chalon, a Belgian antiquarian, who described 52 invented and unique books whose rarity was designed to appeal to certain bibliophiles. The day before the sale was due to take place, an avis was issued (bound here with the catalogue) and an advertisement placed in newspapers announcing the cancellation of the sale, as it had been bought en bloc by the (non-existent) local library. Apparently 132 copies of the catalogue were printed, and 73 copies of the avis. It has been reprinted several times, both by the original printer and in modern facsimile editions; Hoyois also produced a pamphlet describing the hoax in 1857.

Many of the entries are from provincial and local presses; for one of them, lot 66, the spurious collector claimed to have been present at the printing of this copy.

PROVENANCE:

Edouard Ipers, bookplates