The Library of Jean Grolier

4to (28.5 cm), frontispiece printed in colour, VIII, 137 pp., [9] ff. of plates. Publisher's navy and grey cloth boards, with two gilt-stamped medallions to the grey front panel, spine lettered in gilt, top edge gilt (minor shelf-wear). A preliminary catalogue of the library of Jean Grolier (1479-1565), Treasurer-General of France and the most celebrated bibliophile of the French Renaissance, whose name has become synonymous with the finest achievements of sixteenth-century bookbinding. Compiled by Gabriel Austin, the catalogue represents the first systematic attempt to reconstruct Grolier's dispersed library, recording 562 editions surviving in 616 known copies and tracing their present and former ownership through public and private collections worldwide. The volume opens with Colin Eisler's substantial essay, Jean Grolier and the Renaissance, placing Grolier's collecting within the broader intellectual and artistic culture of humanist France and Italy, followed by Elizabeth M. Hajós's bibliography of contemporary references to Grolier. The catalogue proper, arranged alphabetically by author, provides bibliographical descriptions together with detailed provenance information, identifying copies bearing Grolier's famous inscriptions, annotations, and bindings. Extensive provenance indexes cover anonymous sales, anonymous private collections, named former and present owners, institutional collections, and religious houses, making the volume an indispensable research tool for tracing individual books. Seven plates reproduce some of the most celebrated Grolier bindings, including examples attributed to Claude de Picques, Italian plaquette bindings, French Renaissance decorative work, and specimens of Grolier's characteristic autograph inscriptions and marginal annotations. An authoritative reference of the first importance for the study of Renaissance book collecting, provenance, humanist libraries, and the history of fine bookbinding. …