Description sommaire du Chasteau de Versailles.  Paris, 1674.

£2,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Rare first edition of the earliest guide book to the Palace of Versailles and its gardens; we can trace no copies in UK libraries and only one in the US. The Palace of Versailles had been expanded by Louis XIV from the 1660s onwards. The Sun King really made it his base and Felibien as official court historian is at pains to point out the many new decorative features of the palace using the sun motif. Louis XIV himself composed a guide to the Versailles gardens (there are seven different manuscript versions known, some in his own hand) between 1689 and 1705. These were not intended for publication but for the amusement of the king. It is assumed that Felibien had seen the king’s description. Provenance: Grangion(?), contemporary signature inside front cover OCLC (US: Princeton only). Not in LibraryHubUK.

• Year: 1674

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