First edition of a biographical dictionary by the French bookseller, editor and bibliographer Prosper Marchand (1678-1756), an exile living in the Netherlands. It contains short biographies of numerous well-known figures, including Catherine de Medici, Robert Estienne, Cyranides, Lawrence Torrentinus, and many more. Marchand mentions their publications and often includes fragments, short texts and/or poems by them. Since he was an important figure in the literary and intellectual circles of his day, his biographies of contemporaries often include unusual anecdotes about their lives.Marchand was banished from France because of his religion, and started selling books in The Hague. He later became editor of the Journal littéraire, one of the better critical periodicals of the time. The present work was posthumously published by Marchand's friend Jean Nicolas Allamand Samuel.
The book was bound for the Dutch minister Jacques Renaud Bouillier (1737-1798) in the 1780's, probably by the so-called Crevenna Bindery in Amsterdam. The coat-of-arms in the first compartment is most probably Bouilliers and at least one of rolls (r-XII) was used in the Crevenna bindery. In 1762 Bouillier was called to London as minister of the Walloon congregation, and he did not return to the Netherlands until 1779, when he once again set up as a clergyman in Amsterdam. His library was auctioned in Amsterdam in 1800.
With an armorial bookplate on paste-down. The "advertissement de l'editeur" to part II is bound in part I and pages 259-262 are misbound. Binding only slightly worn along the hinges. Overall in very good condition. Berkvens-Stevelinck, Prosper Marchand: La vie et l'oevre (1987); Bigmore & Wyman 23; Taylor, Book catalogues 153.