Description

ORIGINAL EDITION of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's second book.
Illustrated on the frontispiece with a delightful unsigned steel engraving.

Epic novel, L'Arcadie recounts the mythical story of the transformation of the Seine nymph into a river at the mouth of the ocean. "This book is only the beginning of a kind of epic that Bernardin de Saint-Pierre did not complete; this first fragment would be better called Les Gaules. The reader will easily notice the connection between these pages and those of Télémaque, which inspired them. Châteaubriand, in his Martyrs, has likewise enlivened this whole mythology by the contrast of his admirable depictions of the men and things of which Christianity prides itself.." (E. du Chatenet, introduction to the Ardant edition, Limoges, 1883)

Uncommon in a quality contemporary binding.