“WHEN FABLE SITS AT TABLE, GOOD WORDS ARE AS PALATABLE AS GOOD WINE”

BEROALDE DE VERVILLE, Francois. Le Moyen de Parvenir [The Way to Succeed]. No place [probably Paris]: no publisher, 1773. 12mo, period-style full brown morocco gilt, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, raised bands, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt. $950.

Lovely 18th-century edition of this classic 17th-century Rabelaisian satire, The Way to Succeed, with engraved frontispiece. Two volumes beautifully bound in richly gilt period-style morocco.

First published anonymously in 1610, and written by a canon of Tours, Le Moyen de Parvenir is “the fantastic account of a symposium at which all sorts of grave personages of antiquity (such as Solon and Plutarch) and modern times (Commines, Budaeus) exchange anecdotes and jokes of a Rabelaisian obscenity interspersed with satires on the monks, the Church, the nobility, women, tax-collectors, etc. The tales are skillfully told” (Harvey & Heseltine, 65). “A literary banquet of an extraordinarily free composition and inventive style, proves in virtuoso fashion that literature is also a matter of conviviality and that, when fable sits at table, good words are as palatable as good wine” (Hollier, 162). Text in French. Early dealer descriptions tipped to a front flyleaf.

Fine condition. A beautiful copy.