Listoire et faits du tres-Preux noble & vaillant Huon de Bordeaux
The oldest edition with the most illustrations of Huon de Bordeaux (27 woodcuts), of which the editions cited by Bechtel are known only in 2, 3, or 4 complete copies.
In contemporary vellum.
Octavo, 421 leaves. Vellum, smooth spine. Contemporary binding.
160 x 104 mm.
Huon of Bordeaux. The story and deeds of the most illustrious, noble & valiant Huon of Bordeaux, Peer of France, & Duke of Guyenne. Stories contained in two books, offering as many beautiful & entertaining tales and memorable exploits as have ever been seen up to now.
Rouen, at the Widow of Louys Coste, residing on Escuyere street, at the three crowns [circa 1625].
The most illustrated edition of Huon of Bordeaux with 27 woodcuts.
“Rare Rouen edition of the popular story of Huon of Bordeaux. Huon is a knight who, after unwittingly killing Charlot, the son of Emperor Charlemagne, is given a reprieve from death on condition that he fulfills a number of seemingly impossible tasks: he must travel to the court of the Amir in Babylon and return with a handful of the Amir’s hair and teeth, kill the Amir’s mightiest knight, and three times kiss the Amir’s daughter, Esclarmonde. All these Huon eventually achieves with the assistance of the fairy king Oberon. Ill. with 24 woodcuts in text (incl. repeats). Large woodcut on title, part title and at the end.” (Goldsmith (BL) H-688. – Not in BnF, Le livre Populaire).
Very rare edition in prose printed in roman type in Rouen cited by Brunet (III, 382). It is adorned with a woodcut illustration of a knight, repeated on each title leaf as well as on the verso of the final leaf, and with 24 woodcuts in the text, some repeated, depicting scenes from the romance of Huon of Bordeaux.
All these editions are more or less rare, notes Brunet.
Huon of Bordeaux, a chivalric romance, is a chanson de geste from the 13th century, which blended epic material with Breton and Oriental marvels, recounting the adventures and journey to the East of Huon, baron of Charlemagne, accompanied by the dwarf Oberon, at the origin of a cycle composed of several poems. The printed prose version, which includes the romance and its sequels derived from a Burgundian reworking of 1455 for which no manuscript survives, has seen numerous editions since that of Michel Le Noir in 1513 and later in the Bibliothèque bleue up to the 19th century.
“Around the chanson of Huon of Bordeaux, written in Picardy between 1260 and 1268 (M. Rossi), a cycle formed in the second half of the 13th century, which a Turin manuscript dated 1311 gives us nearly complete in about 32,000 verses.
The work known under the title of Huon of Bordeaux (10,553 verses) enjoyed considerable fortune. Very early on, it received several sequels and a prologue, first written in alexandrines (14,796 verses in manuscript Paris, BN, fr. 1451), then, in the 15th century, in a prose version that would be printed in the 16th and, under this new form and up until 1859, would see at least 32 editions, re-editions or reprints. In England, the story provided Shakespeare with the character of Oberon for A Midsummer Night’s Dream; it inspired Geoffrey Chaucer, Spenser, Ben Johnson. In Germany, Wieland drew on it freely for his Oberon, which in turn became the basis for a libretto set to music by Weber. What must have charmed audiences in this work, what still captivates us, is the extraordinary momentum of the narrative, the ease with which the marvelous is mixed with the everyday, and, finally, the vividness and truth of the characters.
The story begins under Charlemagne. Oberon is the prologue to Huon of Bordeaux. For the little king, who in the original poem already presents himself as the son of Julius Caesar and the fairy Morgue, sister of King Arthur, the author took particular care to craft a distinguished genealogy. The greatest originality of Huon of Bordeaux lies in the harmonious combination, by a captivating storyteller, of traditional epic material and the narrative techniques of Breton romances.” Bechtel notes only a very limited number of privately held 16th-century copies: 3rd edition of 1525 (2 copies known); the Huth copy sold for €25,000 in 2004, fifteen years ago; 4th edition of 1545, a copy bound by Koeher sold for €22,500 twelve years ago.
Precious copy, the only one from this edition recorded in contemporary vellum binding.
