RABELAIS François Les Songes drolatiques de Pantagruel, où sont contenues plusieurs figures de l’invention de maistre François Rabelais.

Tchemerzine-Scheler, V, 325 (citing this copy) ; Rawles-Screetch, 113 ; de Bure, Catalogue de la Bibliothèque du duc de la Vallière, II, no. 3871 ; Brun, Le Livre français illustré de la Renaissance, p. 295 ; Mortimer, French, n° 499 ; Brunet IV, 1066 (“Petit volume, fort difficile à trouver complet”).

First and only edition of this album illustrated with 120 grotesque full-page woodcuts.

In 1565, twelve years after the death of François Rabelais (1494-1553), the Parisian bookseller and publisher Richard Breton brought out Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel (The drolatic dreams of Pantagruel). The slim volume, save a short preface from Breton, is made up entirely of images — 120 woodcuts depicting a series of fantastically bizarre and grotesque figures, reminiscent of some of the more inventive and twisted creations of Brueghel or Bosch.

“The great familiarity I had with the late François Rabelais,” Breton writes in the preface, “has moved and even compelled me to bring to light the last of his work, the drolatic dreams of the very excellent and wonderful Patagruel”. Despite the claims (echoed too in the book’s subtitle), the book’s wonderful images are very unlikely to be the work of Rabelais himself — the attribution probably a clever marketing ploy by Breton. Indeed, that this attribution to Rabelais is a ruse might also explain the unusual lack of text beyond the preface, the intimidating task of imitating the comic master’s distinctive literary style perhaps one step too far for Breton. The creator of the prints is now widely thought to be François Desprez, a French engraver and illustrator behind two other sets of imaginative designs, similar in style — Recueil de la diuersité des habits (A Collection of Diverse Costumes) and Recueil des effigies des roys de France (A Collection of Pictures of the Kings of France) — both published through Breton in 1567.

“Recueil de figures sur bois grotesques. Rabelais est entièrement étranger à la composition de ce recueil qui complète cependant une collection rabelaisienne. Plusieurs figures sont copiées sur des oeuvres de Pierre Breughel gravées par Jerôme Cock, publiées après la mort de Rabelais” (Tchemerzine).

The figures are inspired by Gothic drollery, the fashion for grotesques and the works of Brueghel, and also insidiously touch on confessional polemics against the Roman Church: one puppet wears a mitre, another what looks very much like a tiara; a third, an elephant, makes the gesture of blessing… ‘We now know that the printer Richard Breton was committed to the ideas of the Reformation as a Calvinist whose multiple activities covered that of a propagandist of the Gospel’ (see : Wildenstein, L’imprimeur-libraire Richard Breton et son inventaire après décès, 1571, in Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, XXI, 1959, pp. 364-379).

 “Cette suite de figures décèle une imagination drolatique, une verve caricaturale étourdissante. Toutes sont d’un dessin très ferme et d’une taille vigoureuse quoique paraissant avoir été gravées rapidement” (Brun, pp. 60-61). 

The only institutional copies located in the United States are in Cambridge (Harvard) and New York (NYPL).

Last quire with small marginal stains and with lower right corners formerly restored.

A very attractive and complete copy of this rare book with important bibliophile provenance.

Provenance : Duke La Vallière (de Bure, Catalogue, vol. II, 3871).