Daniel, Histoire de la milice françoise, 1724, contemporary calf, 2 volumes, Edward Gibbon's copy

DANIEL, GABRIEL

Histoire de la milice françoise. Amsterdam: au depens de la Compagnie, 1724

Second edition, 2 volumes, 4to (242 x 189mm.), 70 engraved plates, contemporary speckled calf gilt, some plates slightly shorter, slight spotting, rubbed, upper joint splitting on volume 2

GIBBON'S COPY OF THE STANDARD HISTORY OF MILITIA IN FRANCE. Edward Gibbon assembled one of the great libraries of his age, amounting to some 6000-7000 volumes by the time of his death in Lausanne in 1794. This book was a relatively early acquisition: it has his early book label and is listed in the 1777 catalogue of his library at Bentinck Street. After Gibbon's death his library was bought for £950 by William Beckford, who explained that he wanted "to have something to read when I was in Lausanne". The library was, it seems, too much of a good thing: "I read myself nearly blind. I made a present of the library to my physician." (Keynes, p.28) This book was amongst the 1412 volumes which this fortunate doctor, Frederic Scholl, sold to John Walter Halliday in 1825, and which eventually appeared in these rooms in 1934.

LITERATURE:

STCN 288581156; Keynes, The Library of Edward Gibbon (1980), p.107

PROVENANCE:

Edward Gibbon, historian (1737-94), early booklabel and armorial bookplate (first version); Sotheby's, 20 December 1934, lot 59, to Robinson; entry from unknown [Robinson?] dealer's catalogue pasted on endpapers