Le Rommant de la Rose.

In-folio of 93 ff. out of 150 ff. with 48 (out of 92) wood engravings.

Brown calf, blind-tooled fillet bordering the covers, spine with raised bands decorated with gilt fillets and fleurons, citron morocco title labels, red edges. Binding around the year 1650.

269 x 198 mm.

Lorris, Guillaume de – Meung, Jean de. Le Roman de la Rose.

[Lyon], [Guillaume Le Roy], (1486).

Here begins the Roman de la Rose In which all the art of love is enclosed [m]Many people say that in dreams There are only fables and lies… (150 r° :) This is the end of the Roman de la Rose In which all the art of love is enclosed.

First incunable edition of theRoman de la Rose featuring a title and the only listed copy of the first printing of the third general edition, printed in Lyon, by Guillaume Le Roy, in 1486.

BMC, VIII, 367; Bechtel, Catalogue des gothiques français, p. 355, G-368; Francis William Bourdillon, The Early Editions of The Roman de la Rose, Geneva, 1974, p. 39; Copinger, 5157; Proctor, 8518; Brunet III, 1170; Claudin, III, 96; Tchemerzine, VII, 231; Rothschild, 1(1884), 435; Fairfax Murray, I, 323; Stillwell, R 300; Polain (B), 3398; Goff R-309.

Unique recorded copy of the very first printing of the Guillaume Le Roy 1486 edition of the Roman de la Rose, comprising here 186 pages and 48 woodcuts, of which 47 are column-width and one is two columns wide. This first printing or trial of the first edition is distinguished from the second printing by a different layout and a varying number of lines per page, from 38 to 41; the well-known second printing of 1487 has 41 lines per page throughout.

Jean-Paul Barbier suspected the existence of these two printings for this famous incunable edition but having never seen the first, he only mentioned its probable existence without describing its specific features.

About the second printing of 1487, which he owned, he wrote: “Precious and famous incunable edition now considered the third, and the first to feature a title. It is described in many works, especially Le Petite’s, as the editio princeps.

Today (see Bourdillon, The Early Editions of the Roman de la Rose, London 1906, pp. 21 and 39), it is accepted that the first edition was issued in Lyon around 1481 by Ortuin and Schenck and the second, printed by Jehan Syber, also in Lyon, around 1485. Ours is dated 1486 or 1487 depending on the author, who all unanimously attribute it to the famous Guillaume Le Roy.

The latter used similar typefaces, not for the Doctrinal de Sapience, but for the Fier-à-Bras of January 20, 1486. It is curious to note that the border of the first page of text (see reproduction) was already present in the earlier edition of Ortuin and Schenck, which was copied by Le Roy.

It is possible that there are two printings of this edition; in fact, some copies have a title spelled: Le Romaut de la rose…

Le Roman de la Rose, begun by a true and delicate poet, Guillaume de Lorris, was completed by Jean Clopinel, known as “de Meung”, a learned scholar whose diatribes against women were to spark a controversy whose last echoes would still be felt in the midst of the Renaissance.” (J.-P. Barbier)

Le Roman de La Rose was printed for sixty years, at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Bourdillon lists twenty-one editions between 1481 and 1538. It is remarkable that the Roman de la Rose has been illustrated from its very beginnings. The first three editions, incunable and illustrated, of the Roman de la Rose are all extremely rare. The vast majority are preserved in the most prestigious public institutions. The few copies remaining in private hands have belonged to the greatest collections. In thirty years, only three copies have been offered for sale: an incomplete original edition (Albert Natural, April 28, 1999), a copy of the second edition (Paris, May 13, 1987), and a copy of this Le Roy edition (Otto Schäfer, New York, III, November 1, 1995, no. 147) but of the second printing. The challenging classification of these three editions lies in the absence of printer’s name and printing date on the title page or colophon.

This copy of the so-called “Le Roy edition” of the first printing appears to be the only one recorded.

“This famous edition has been frequently taken for the first edition of the Roman de la Rose. It is the one mentioned first by Brunet... This is the first edition with a title-page.”

The Roman de la Rose was first printed in Geneva around 1481, by Jean Croquet. Only about a dozen copies are known in public institutions and one or two in private hands. One of these copies appeared in the same Ambroise Firmin Didot sale (1878), which thus offered two incunable copies of the Roman de la Rose. It is worth noting that the original edition copy (La Vallière copy, under number 126) was offered one number after ours, as the order of editions was not well known at the time.

The second edition of the Roman de la Rose (Lyon, Jean Syber, around 1485) is known by only six copies, probably all incomplete. It is virtually identical to the third: same number of lines over two columns and same illustrations.

The third edition, second printing, known as the “Le Roy edition”, is known, according to ISTC, from 17 copies including several fragments, the vast majority preserved in public institutions: at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (two copies, including the former James de Rothschild collection copy), Musée Condé, Lyon public library (incomplete), Beaux-Arts de Paris library (incomplete), Angoulême public library, the British Library, the National Library of Wales Aberystwyth, the Bodmer, at Liège (very incomplete), Turin (incomplete), the Bodleian, the Pierpont Morgan, and the Library of Congress. In private hands, the following have been recorded:

The Otto Schäfer copy bound by Trautz-Bauzonnet as well as the copies mentioned by Bechtel: the Jean-Paul Barbier copy in binding by Semet and Plumelle (March 11, 1974, no. 40), and another offered for sale in Paris on March 28, 1977. Finally, Bourdillon lists his own copy (Buddington copy), and the Didot copy, which he says was one of the most expensive sold at the time: “Though somewhat less rare than either of the two preceding editions, the Le Roy Folio has been probably the most eagerly sought after of all the early-printed editions, and high prices have been paid for fine copies. Thus the copy in the Didot sale, 1878, no. 125, with title, fetches 5,500 francs”

(Bourdillon, p. 39).

Incunable editions of the Roman de la Rose, still in private hands, are thus very rare. They represent the cornerstone of any collection of precious books.

This copy confirms the rule.

The following editions were also illustrated. After 1538, this masterwork of the Middle Ages ceased to be published for two hundred years, until 1735. To locate the antiquity of these early incunable editions, it’s worth recalling that the first book printed in French was the Légende dorée, in Lyon, by Barthélémy Buyer, in 1476. Villon’s Grand Testament, the Belle Dame sans merci, and Alain Chartier’s Les Faits were all printed in 1489.

Another specific feature of the second printing of Guillaume Le Roy’s edition is described as follows by J. P. Barbier: “- f. k₃ r°: in this page are found the verses relating to the continuation by Jean de Meung of Guillaume de Lorris’s work (on leaf k₃ recto):

For when Guillaume has ceased

Jehan will continue it

After his death that I do not lie

Years passed more than forty…”

In our first printing, the fourth verse above is printed on the verso of leaf k₃.

Exceptional and very rich set of 186 pages from the very first printing of Guillaume le Roy’s edition printed in 1486, here bound as early as 1650.

This first printing has so far escaped the notice of all bibliographers, an exceptional phenomenon for a text of such importance.

Second printing copies, much more common, are in their vast majority bound in 19th-century bindings and composed of several originally incomplete copies.

From the library of Pierre Pupil, President of the Baillage of Bourg-Argental with armorial bookplate.