“LE BEAU NARCISSE, ECHO SA BELLE AMANTE…”

(MALFILÂTRE, Jacques-Charles-Louis Clinchamp de). Narcisse dans l’Isle de Venus. Poëme en Quatre Chants. Paris: Chez Lejay, (1769). Slim octavo, contemporary half calf, elaborately gilt-decorated spine. $750.

First edition of this poem in four cantos, with lovely engraved title page by de Ghent after Eisen, and four engraved plates, one for each canto, by Massard after Gabriel de Saint-Aubin. A choice copy in contemporary calf-gilt.

Published posthumously, Narcisse was the young Malfilâtre’s masterpiece, based on the myth of Narcissus and Echo. “Born in Normandy, a poet of some promise who died young and unrecognized” (Harvey & Heseltine, 441). This volume also includes a small group of Malfilâtre’s odes entitled “Le Soleil Fixe au Milieu des Planètes.” Text in French.

Fine condition. A lovely illustrated volume.