Beschreibung:

RABELAIS, FRANÇOIS. La Plaisante, & ioyeuse histoyre du grand Geant Gargantua. Prochainement reveue, & de beaucoup augmentée par l'Autheur mesme. Lyons: Estienne Dolet 1542. 16mo, 117 x 76 mm. (4 5/8 x 3 in.), nineteenth-century dark blue straight-grained morocco, covers with gilt roll-tooled border, smooth spine gilt in compartments, turn-ins gilt, g.e., slight scuffing to extremities, upper inner hinge weak, title-leaf darkened and with a few small repairs, one grazing a letter, repair to m8 affecting 2 words which are strengthened in ink, quires a-b and a few leaves in quires d and e excessively washed, causing fading or slight blurring of letterpress, small printing flaw to s2r, creases to r3 and r6 affecting a few words, a few marginal repairs, occasional spotting, washed and pressed . Collation: a-r8 s6. 144 leaves. Roman type, title woodcuts, 58 text woodcuts (from 14 blocks), Dolet's woodcut device (Silvestre 910) on verso of last leaf, text in 56 chapters. RARE EDITION OF THE FIRST VERSION OF " GARGANTUA ", WITH THE "SUBVERSIVE" PASSAGES LATER SUPPRESSED BY RABELAIS, this copy without Dolet's edition of Pantagruel , printed concurrently and usually bound with the present work. The title's assertion of the author's involvement in the text is specious, since the edition is a copy of the undated 1537 edition attributed to the Parisian press of Denis Janot. The text thus includes the "subversive" passages containing remarks offensive to the Sorbonne, that were expurgated by Rabelais from François Juste's 1542 edition, the first of three editions of Gargantua and Pantagruel printed in Lyons in 1542, and does not include the additional passages that appeared in Juste's edition, which established the definitive text of the two works. Pierre-Paul Plan argues that Juste's edition must have been printed only shortly before this one, or nearly at the same time, since, while Dolet was clearly unaware of the existence of a revised edition of the text, the Juste edition makes no mention of Dolet's rival edition - unlike the third 1542 edition of the two books, issued by an unnamed press which was probably that of Pierre de Tours, Juste's successor. This latter edition contains a note from the printer that consists of a diatribe against the "plagiarist" Dolet, injustly accused of having pirated Juste's edition (see following lot). A few months after printing this edition, Dolet was imprisoned in the Conciergirie, where he remained for 15 months. Two years later he was tried and executed for heresy. All editions of Rabelais's works published during his lifetime are OF GREAT RARITY. The last copy of any of these early editions to come up at auction was the La Roche Lacarelle - Mortimer Schiff copy of Juste's 1542 edition, sold at Christie's, London, on 20 May, 1970 (lot 93). Plan 41; Rawles and Screech 24 (9 copies); Rothschild II, 1509; Tchemerzine V, 271. Provenance : Horace Landau, bookplate (inventory no. 3804).