Beschreibung:

RABELAIS, FRANÇOIS. La Plaisante, & Ioyeuse histoyre du grand Geant Gargantua. Prochainement reveue, & de beaucoup augmentée par l'Autheur mesme; [ part 2 :] Second livre de Pantagruel, Roy des Dipsodes... Plus Les merveilleuses nauigations du disciple de Pantagruel, dict Panurge; [ part 3 :] Tiers Liure Des Faictz, et Dictz Heroiques du noble Pantagruel... Valence: Claude la Ville 1547; [ bound with :] Le Quart Livre des faictz & dictz Heroiques du noble Pantagruel. Lyons: [Pierre de Tours] 1548. 2 vols. in one, 16mo, 119 x 74 mm. (4 3/4 x 22 15/16 in.), contemporary or slightly later laced-case binding of vellum over pasteboard, small yapp edges, later (nineteenth-century?) ink lettering on spine, spine lining from a fifteenth-century manuscript breviary, lacking ties, lower endband renewed, two-part red morocco gilt pull-off case; faint trace of dampstaining to extreme upper and lower margins of first few leaves, slight orange staining to pp. 248 and 249 (q4-5) in vol. 3 . Collation: a-p8 q4; A-T8; 2a-r8, 412 leaves (including 1q4 blank), parts 1-3 separately paginated, p. 303 in Pantagruel correctly numbered; Le Quart Livre : A-F8, 48 leaves. Roman type, four titles (plus full-page section title for the Navigations de Panurge ), first title with a small woodcut, a total of approximately 160 small woodcuts in the text (printed from 80 blocks, of which 72 in the first work, and 8 in the Quart Livre ), the opening woodcut of each book showing the author presenting his book to a benefactor, beneath a cartouche in which "Franç. Rabel." is printed in letterpress (the cartouche at the head of the spurious Les Navigations de Panurge left blank), Le Quart livre with woodcut initials. FIRST COLLECTED EDITION OF THE FIRST THREE BOOKS OF GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL, BOUND WITH THE FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST VERSION OF THE "QUART LIVRE". Published six years before Rabelais's death, and preceding the first complete edition of the first four books by five years, this first collected edition reproduces, for the first two books, Dolet's 1542 editions, complete with the "subversive" passages, offensive to the Sorbonne, that were suppressed in the Lyons 1542 edition printed by François Juste, and without the additional passges of the Juste edition. The Tiers Livre is a reprint of the first edition printed in 1546 by Christian Wechsel in Paris, and contains the same error in the chapter numbering (the 46 chapters are numbered to 47, number 26 being omitted). The majority of the woodcuts were previously used in Lyonese editions of Aesop. A counterfeit edition of this first collective edition was printed c. 1600, possibly in Geneva (see following lot). Brunet IV, 1051 and Supplement II, 363-4; Plan 84; Tchemerzine V, 296-97. This first version of the Quart Livre (in which Pantagruel and his companions set out for Cathay via the Northwest Passage, testifying to Rabelais's interest in the recent voyages of discovery) contains only a Prologue and the first 11 (of 67) chapters, the last chapter ending most oddly in mid-sentence. Pierre de Tours published a second edition the same year, containing 54 leaves, in the same typeface though set differently and with 3 woodcuts changed (cf. Rothschild for a discussion of the priority of the editions). The text of these first 11 chapters was substantially modified for the first complete edition of the Quart Livre (Paris: M. Fezandat, 1552). Plan 84 and 76; Rawles and Screech 38 and 42; Brunet IV, 1051 and 1053-4, Supplement II, 363-5; Rothschild II, 3202 and 1513; Tchemerzine V, 296-7 and 291a; Fairfax Murray French 469 (Valence 1547 edition only, without Quart Livre ). Both of these editions are OF GREAT RARITY. Of the Valence 1547 edition Rawles and Screech list 4 institutional copies, of which one (BN) contains the Tiers Livre only, and another is imperfect (Paris, Beaux-Arts), the present copy, misdescribed as "lacking front board, spine damaged", the Fairfax-Murray copy, and 8 other copies of which