Guevara, Les epistres dorees, Paris, 1573, contemporary French calf gilt with title label on a flap

3 parts in one volume, 8vo (168 x 105 mm). Roman and italic type, double columns, 40 lines plus headline. collation: ã⁸ A-Y⁸ Aa-Tt⁸ AAa-QQq⁸: 464 leaves. Title-page and verso of final text leaf with woodcut device, woodcut initials, some passages annotated with cross symbols in the margin by an early modern reader.

binding: Contemporary French brown calf (175 x 116 mm), 3 blind lines around sides, rectangular frame formed by blind fillets, gilt fleurons at outer angles, larger gilt fleuron in centre, spine with 5 full and 2 half bands, gilt quatrelobe in compartments, plain edges, title in ink on head-edge and on second spine compartment, contemporary title-label in ink ("Epistres dorees") on flap attached to lower pastedown. (Spine ends and corners restored.)

provenance: Fr. Guy Hourdez, O.P., at the Jacobins of Lille, ownership inscription to upper endpaper, dated 1582, with a further ownership inscription (giving Latinised version of his name) on verso of rear endpaper, also dated 1582—“Couvent des Soeurs Prescheresses de Metz”, seventeenth- or eighteenth-century ownership inscription on title-page—"Nuper Leo", nineteenth-century ownership inscription—Dr. André and Janine Morel of Paris (A.I.B. members), twentieth-century bookplate. acquisition: Purchased in 2002 from Rossignol, Paris. references: USTC 39488 (listing six institutional copies)