Details

Subjects:

French poetry -- 17th century.
French poetry.
French letters -- 17th century.
French letters.

Form/Genre:

Codices.
Poems.
Satires (document genre)
Sonnets.
Translations (documents)
Manuscripts, French.
Manuscripts, European.

Language:

French.

Summary:

Late 17th- or early 18th-century collection of selected letters and poems. The letters are by 17th-century writers such as Nicolas Fouquet, Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, Mathieu de Montreuil, and Pierre Costar. The poems include verses that seem intended to be sung (titled Madrigal, Air, Sur l'air, Songe, Balade, Rondeau), verses identified by form (Sonnet, Quatrain), epitaphs and poems on the deaths of various individuals (including Oliver Cromwell, f. 240v), and a number of French verse translations (titled Traduction or Imitation) of classical Latin authors (Apuleius, Catullus, Horace, Virgil). Some poems are attributed to 17th-century poets such as Pierre Corneille, Georges de Brébeuf, Jean de la Fontaine, Nicolas Boileau Despréaux, François de Malherbe, Paul Scarron, Jean Ogier de Gombauld, and Isaac de Benserade, many with page numbers presumably referring to printed editions. A group of poems near the end of the volume are dated in the late 1680s (f. 243v-247v)

Notes:

Ms. codex.
Title from title page (f. 1r).
Collation: Paper, 259; 1² (1 pasted to endpaper) 2-5⁶ 6⁸ 7⁴ 8-16⁶ 17-18⁴ 19² 20-30⁸ 31⁴ 32-39⁸ 40²; gatherings 2-40 signed 1-39 in ink, upper right recto; [i, 1-258]; modern foliation in pencil, lower right recto. Occasional catchwords (f. 100v, 148v).
Script: Written in cursive script by multiple hands.
Binding: 18th-century calf, gilt spine with title Recueil de lettres.
Origin: Written in France in the late 17th or early 18th century.

Penn Provenance:

Formerly in the library of Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, duchesse de Berry.
Sold at auction at Sotheby's with other items from the library of the duchesse de Berry, 8 June 2011, lot 170.

Cited as:

UPenn Ms. Codex 1597

Contributor:

Berry, Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, duchesse de, 1798-1870, former owner.

OCLC:

743046403