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Roxburghe Club publications are produced in two states. Each member of the Club receives a copy bound in half calf. In the list of members of the Club, each recipient's name is printed in red ink. Normally, not more than 42 copies are printed in this form. Additionally a member can print up to 300 copies of the title usually bound in cloth. These are available for sale, usually through the antiquarian bookdealers listed below.

Maggs Bros., 48 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DR
Telephone: + 44 (0) 20 7493 7160
Fax: + 44 (0) 20 7499 2007
Email: robert@maggs.com
Attention of: Robert Harding

Bernard Quaritch Limited, 36 Bedford Row, Holborn, London WC1R 4JH
Telephone: + 44 (0) 20 7297 4888
Fax: + 44 (0) 20 7297 4866
Email: rarebooks@quaritch.com

Esther Inglis's LES PROVERBES DE SALOMON, a facsimile with an introduction by Nicolas Barker

Sale Notes

£60

Sale Vendor

Maggs Bros Ltd.

Notes

Small 8vo. xiii, 124, 69 (facsimile) pp., including a colour portrait of Esther Inglis and two colour plates. Bound in red cloth. London: The Roxburghe Club, 2012

ISBN 97800901953186.


Facsimile of a calligraphic manuscript of Les Proverbes de Salomon written by Esther Inglis in Edinburgh in 1601 originally for Catherine de Bourbon (1558-1604), sister of King Henri IV, altered probably for Sir Thomas and Lady Hayes. The manuscript was acquired by the late Sir Paul Getty, K.B.E. in 1977 and is now in The Wormsley Library.

Esther Inglis (1570-1624) was the daughter of Nicholas Langlois and Marie Presot, French Huguenots who fled the country in 1569 and settled in Edinburgh. Around 1596 she married Bartholomew Kello, a presbyterian minister, and she made a living with her pen, creating some fifty-five jewel-like manuscripts of religious texts or poems which were beautifully bound in embroidered or gilt leather covers and dedicated to the rich and powerful, ranging from the royal family, members of the court and senior clergymen, down to her landlord, in the hope of financial reward.

The manuscript is a calligraphic tour-de-force; it opens with a penwork self-portrait of Esther at her writing desk with pen and paper and is written in a variety of accomplished hands, including an open ‘droicte entrelacée’ (the letters woven in and out with a continuous cord ending in tassels), ‘ronde venecienne’, ‘lettre chanceleresque’, ‘lettre plaisante’, ‘lettre frizée’ (joined in continuous interlinear rope-work), ‘lettre coupée’, ‘lettre chanceleresque penchée’, ‘lettre carrée’, ‘lettre d'estat’, ‘lettres mignardes’, ‘lettre ancienne’, and ‘droict entrelacée’ (threaded with cord through trompe-l’oeil slits).

The facsimile is introduced by Nicolas Barker who places Inglis’s life and work within the wider context of Renaissance writing-masters and their works. Barker has also updated the census of Inglis's manuscripts compiled by Aydua Scott-Elliot and Elspeth Yeo in 1990 recording several newly discovered manuscripts and the new locations of those which have changed ownership.

This edition is privately printed for the Roxburghe Club, which has agreed to make 200 copies available for sale from Maggs Bros.

Select a sale item to view the details:

• HERALDO MEMORIALE. OR MEMOIRS OF THE COLLEGE OF ARMS FROM 1727 TO 1744.
• VOLTAIRE. THÉRÈSE, A FRAGMENT.
• ASPECTS OF FRENCH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TYPOGRAPHY. By John Dreyfus.
• THE GARDYNERS PASSETAUNCE (c. 1512).
• REMEMBRANCES OF THINGS WORTH SEEING IN ITALY GIVEN TO JOHN EVELYN 25 APRIL 1646.
• TWO EAST ANGLIAN PICTURE BOOKS.
• THE LAST YEARS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.
• SIR THOMAS SMITH’S MISMANAGEMENT OF THE VIRGINIA COMPANY BY NICHOLAS FERRAR.
• SYON ABBEY.
• JAMES BOSWELL’S BOOK OF COMPANY AT AUCHINLECK.
• IL QUADRIREGIO.
• THE SEARCH FOR THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.
• JAN HUYGEN VAN LINSCHOTEN AND THE MORAL MAP OF ASIA.
• THE GREAT BOOK OF THOMAS TREVILIAN.
• RONALD FIRBANK. LETTERS TO HIS MOTHER, 1920-24 and LA PRINCESSE AUX SOLEILS.
• THE TOLLEMACHE BOOK OF SECRETS.
• THE WIZARD EARL’S ADVICES TO HIS SON.
• FRAGMENTA REGALIA. OBSERVATIONS OF THE LATE QUEENE ELIZABETH, HIR TIMES AND FAUORITES.
• THE ARUNDEL CHOIRBOOK.
• HOLKHAM LIBRARY: A HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION.
• THE LIBRARY OF THOMAS TRESHAM AND THOMAS BRUDENELL.
• INIGO JONES’S ROMAN SKETCHBOOK.
• THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN MR DISRAELI AND MRS BRYDGES WILLIAMS, 1851-1863.
• THE PHILOBIBLON SOCIETY. SOCIABILITY AND BOOK COLLECTING IN MID-VICTORIAN BRITAIN. BY DAVID MCKITTERICK. THE ROXBURGHE CLUB, 2020
• A Letter from India, written in 1824 by Reginald Heber. Edited by Nicolas Barker
• THE BRUSH HAS BEAT THE POETRY! ILLUSTRATIONS TO LORD BYRON'S WORKS. EDITED BY JOHN R. MURRAY
• BIBLIOTHECA LINDESIANA.
• THE MIRROURE OF THE WORLDE. MS BODLEY 283 (ENGLAND c. 1470-1480).
• THE LUMLEY INVENTORY. ART COLLECTING AND LINEAGE IN THE ELIZABETHAN AGE. EDITED BY MARK EVANS. THE ROXBURGHE CLUB 2010.
• THE ROXBURGHE CLUB: A BICENTENARY HISTORY By Nicolas Barker. The Roxburghe Club, 2012
• A DYNASTY OF DEALERS: JOHN SMITH AND SUCCESSORS, 1801-1924. A STUDY OF THE ART MARKET IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LONDON.
• The AMORES of Sigismondo Boldoni
• Esther Inglis's LES PROVERBES DE SALOMON, a facsimile with an introduction by Nicolas Barker
• AN EARLY BRETON GOSPEL BOOK. A NINTH CENTURY MANUSCRIPT FROM THE COLLECTION OF H. L. BRADFER-LAWRENCE (1887-1965)
• JOHN MEADE FALKNER: ABNORMAL ROMANTIC
  A biography by Richard Davenport-Hines