Lettres de Madame de Sévigné à sa Fille et à ses Amis (12 volume set)

Text in French.  Complete set in twelve volumes.  Set uniformly bound in half calf's leather over patterned pink paper-covered boards, gilt titles and decorations on spine. Top edges gilt. 16mo.  Boards rubbed and rounded at edges, especially on corners and around spines. some light staining and fading, gilding on upper text block edges dulled, one volume has some mild scratch marks on paper boards.  Previous owner's label on the front paste down of each volume.  Some faint and occasional spotting on first and last few leaves.  In one volume the half title page is creased else set neat, clean and bright internally.  Bindings strong and firm.

A lovely set, manufactured using the Herhan process - a technological innovation in the stereotype process, which has given its name to this edition - the stereotype edition.  Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Madame de Sévigné (1626 – 1696) was a Paris-born noblewomen, remembered for her letter-writing. Most of her letters, celebrated for their wit and vividness, were to her daughter, Françoise-Marguerite de Sévigné. She is revered in France as one of the great icons of French 17th-century literature and has served as inspiration for other writers - her letters figure in Proust's In Search of Lost Time and she is the model for Maria in Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis River.