COPY OF ELISABETH-CHRISTINE DE PRUSSE. - Lot 239

COPY OF ELISABETH-CHRISTINE DE PRUSSE. ALEMAN (Mateo). HISTORY OF THE ADMIRABLE DON GUZMAN D'ALFARACHE. Enriched with intaglio figures. Sold in Brussels, Jean Van Vlaenderen, 1734. Three volumes in three volumes in-12, full tawny calf, spine ribbed, crowned numeral on covers. (Contemporary binding) Joints cracked, headbands worn, corners dulled. Very good condition inside. Initials E C interlaced: cipher of Elisabeth-Christine of Prussia, wife of Frederick II (1712-1786), model of the enlightened despot and author of an anti-machiavel. Re-edition of Gabriel Brémont's translation, first published in 1696. This translation replaces and modernizes that of Jean Chappelain, published fifty years earlier. The work was later translated by Alain-René Lesage. The work is illustrated with three frontispieces and sixteen engravings by Harrewyn. Mateo Aleman, born in 1547, the same year as Cervantes, inaugurated the first form of the European novel with this picaresque novel. Shortly before "Quixote", he portrayed the common people, misery and the exploitation of the weak. The provenance of these volumes (Elisabeth-Christine of Prussia) shows the extent to which picaresque literature was read by Europe's intellectual elite in the mid-18th century. Handwritten bookplate: "Bibliotheca Principis Henrici Borussiae" Prince Henry of Prussia (son of Frederic II?), who devotes a long handwritten note in French to Mateo Aleman and his translators. Proof that this court was particularly Francophile and erudite. Palau 6759.