Bod-Inc: J-094
Jean D'Arras
Histoire de la belle Melusine.
Analysis of Content
a1r [Title-page.]
a2r Jean D'Arras: [Preface.] Incipit: ‘[A]n toutes oeuures commencer on doit tout premierement appeller le nom du createur . . .’
a2v Jean D'Arras: Histoire de la belle Melusine. ‘Comment ce liure fut fait par le commandement de Jehan filz du roy de France duc de Berry et dauuerigne.’ Jean d'Arras, Mélusine, ed. Louis Stouff (Geneva, 1974); see also L'histoire de la belle Mélusine de Jean d'Arras. Reproduction en fac-simile de l'edition de Gèneve, imprimée par A. Steinschaber en 1478, ed. W. J. Meyer (Berne, 1923-4); Lydia Zeldenrust, 'Serpent or Half-Serpent? Bernhard Richel's Melusine and the Making of a Western European Icon', Neophilologus, 100 (2016), 19-41.
Imprint
Imprint: Lyons: Guillaume Le Roy, [c.1487]. Folio.
Collation
Collation: a–z8.
Illustrations: Woodcuts.
References
ISTC: ij00218400
Hain: H 11057;
Proctor: Pr 8514;
Others: Claudin III 95-6; Pellechet 1323; Sheppard 6574.
LCN: 14500361
Copies
Copy number: J-094(1)
Wanting a1, b1, n2,7.
Replacements for the missing leaves contain text supplied in manuscript, and engravings.
Binding: Eighteenth-century French gold-tooled olive-green morocco, faded from blue, with marbled pastedowns, gilt-edged leaves, and orange silk book-mark.
Size: 274 × 196 × 30 mm.
Size of leaf: 267 × 181 mm.
A few marginal notes, mainly extracting key words and correcting the text, in three different early hands, one certainly French. Bibliographical notes in Douce's hand, including the transcription of a poem by Boissieu de Salvaing(?), Sylvae de miraculis Delphinatus: ‘Luzinianæos postquam Meluzina Penates, | Indignata viro, colubri sub imagine, linquit'; 14 hexameters. A letter from the Bodleian to Henry Ellis (1777-1869), British Museum, containing a passage from the text, has been inserted between z8 and z9.
Three- to ten-line initials and line fillers supplied in interlocked red and blue. Other initials and paragraph marks supplied in red or blue.
Provenance: Paul Girardot de Préfond (+after c.1800); name stamped on the front pastedown; see Catalogue (Paris, 1757), 943. Louis Jean Gaignat (1697-1768); see Guillaume de Bure, Bibliographie instructive: Supplément, 2 vols (Paris, 1769), lot 2352. John Hunter (eighteenth/nineteenth century); sale (5 Feb. 1802), lot 106. Purchased by Francis Douce (1757-1834); armorial book-plate. Bequeathed in 1834.
SHELFMARK: Douce 182.
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