Marivaux

1734 · elala1412 — The Hague: C. De Rogissart & Sisters 1734-35. 1734. 5 Volumes in 1. 12mo. pp. 95; 106 2 blank leaves; 111; 94 blank leaf; 92. woodcut ornaments initials & title vignettes. contemporary vellum bit soiled hint of foxing. ownership entry of Maria Mackenzie dated March 1750. with the bookplates of Lytton Strachey & Roger Senhouse. Second Edition published the same year as the rare Paris first. "Marivaux’s greatest achievement as a novelist is his two memoir-novels both published in instalments and left unfinished…These free-wheeling digressive texts display most fully their author’s gift for combining psychological exploration and moral reflection…Where La Vie de Marianne belongs to the moralizing and sentimental romance tradition Le Paysan is a cynical comic novel of the way of the world though both stories are full of subtle psychological observations. The tale is told in later life by the unashamed and good-humoured hero Jacob who has risen from his peasant origins to a wealthy and respectable position as a tax-farmer thanks to his resourceful wit and his physical attractions. He profits amorally from the affections of a series of usually older women some of them with reputations for piety; these adventures are recounted in a spirited style with a sharp eye for the hypocrisy of the respectable." The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French Gay V 459. cfCioranescu 42730 Paris: 1735-36. cfQuérard V 543 Paris: 1735. cfTchemerzine VII 427 b Paris: 1735. The Hague: C. De Rogissart & Sisters, 1734-35. hardcover