HE LIVED IN MISERY & DIED IN POVERTY

Rife with mythological misdirection and puzzling references to the muses, Les Isles Le Bas's L'Apollon Francois (Rouen 1674, 18mo) is a prosody manual for lovers and social climbers. Three of his plays flopped and another was banned, leading to the author's imprisonment. Only edition.

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IT RUINED HIM

The Würzberg Agenda (Würzberg 1564, folio) bankrupted its printer when its commissioner, the Prince-Elector of Würzberg, only paid half the agreed sum for his copies. Baumann attempted a reissue supposedly suitable for all dioceses, but this too failed to sell and his heirs closed the press the next year. Nevertheless, a beautifully illustrated and masterfully executed book.

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HE COULDN'T SAVE HIMSELF

This anonymous dialog (Berlin c. 1734, 4to) debunks the famous Kehrberg Wonderchild: the seventh son of a Lutheran blacksmith with purported miraculous healing powers. His family was arrested by the authorities and the child died in custody.



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BIBLIOGRAPHIC LIQUIDATION

The bookseller Pierre-Michel Lamy fell on hard times and sold his library to either capitalize his business or meet his creditors' demands. This priced catalog of his 1808 auction (Paris 1807, 8vo) includes early books on vellum, Aldines, large paper copies, illuminated manuscripts, prints, vernacular incunabula and modern fine printing... amassed during his five decade career. The annotator also recorded combined lots, omitted books, defective copies and even states of prints.

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"THE MOST IMPORTANT COURTLY TREATISE ON FEMALE BEAUTY OF THIS PERIOD"

Trissino's I Ritratti (Rome 1524, 4to) provides a portrait in words of his patron, the lovely and learned Isabella d'Este. The text is set in the graceful chancery type of Ludovico Arrighi, who incorporated new letterforms to reflect Trissino's proposed orthographic changes to the Italian language. Their collaboration was cut short when Arrighi was killed three years later in Charles V's sack of Rome.

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A WINDOW INTO HIS WORKING METHODS

When Louise-Jeanne de Durfort, duchess of Mazarin, died, she owed the skilled decorative artist Pierre-Joseph Gouthière over eighty-two thousand livres. He sued. This manuscript (Paris 1789, folio) describes each piece and itemizes the costs of labor and design as part of an appraisal of the unpaid work in the duchess' townhouse. The results were not enough to save the artist from decades of ensuing poverty.

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THE DANGERS OF VANITY

This second illustrated edition of Savonarola's Tractato...in defensione & co[m]endatione delloratione mentale (Florence 1495-6, 4to) decries the vanities of polyphony and organ music. In 1497 the bonfire of the vanities destroyed the material distractions from the silent meditation advocated here — and in 1498, Savonarola himself would meet the flames, condemned for heresy.

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