[DRELINCOURT, Laurent.] Sonnets chretiens. Sur divers sujets. Divisez en quatre livres.

[DRELINCOURT, Laurent.] Sonnets chretiens. Sur divers sujets. Divisez en quatre livres.Protestant Poetry and a Persecuted Printer [DRELINCOURT, Laurent.] Sonnets chretiens. Sur divers sujets. Divisez en quatre livres. Niort: Widow of Philippe Bureau. 1677. 8vo. Near contemporary sheep, spine gilt in compartments, title lettered directly in gilt, raised bands, speckled edges; pp. [xii], 171, [1 (blank)]; woodcut armillary sphere to title, typographic head and tailpieces, woodcut factotum initials; corners and joints subtly restored,

Protestant Poetry and a Persecuted Printer

[DRELINCOURT, Laurent.] Sonnets chretiens. Sur divers sujets. Divisez en quatre livres. Niort: Widow of Philippe Bureau. 1677.

8vo. Near-contemporary sheep, spine gilt in compartments, title lettered directly in gilt, raised bands, speckled edges; pp. [xii], 171, [1 (blank)]; woodcut armillary sphere to title, typographic head- and tailpieces, woodcut factotum initials; corners and joints subtly restored, small abrasion to lower board, headcap and small portion of lower board chipped, small wormhole at foot of spine; small marginal paperflaw to title, closed paperflaw to f. I7 touching four words but not affecting legibility, pale dampstain at inner margin of quires H-L (heavier to quires K and L); else a very good copy; early ownership inscription ‘Jane Parker her book’ to front free endpaper, eighteenth-century ownership inscription ‘John Morton Junior’ to title.

First edition, very rare, of these devotional sonnets by the Protestant poet, pastor, and theologian Drelincourt, printed in Niort by the Huguenot printer Anne Bureau, and dedicated to Princess Émilie von Hesse-Kassel, our copy with early English female provenance, likely brought to England by Bureau’s sons who had fled France in the aftermath of the Edict of Fontainebleau.

Laurent Drelincourt (1625–1680), son of the noted Protestant divine Charles Drelincourt, studied theology and philosophy at Saumur before settling in Niort in 1663. His Sonnets, written during a period of sleepless nights, are divided into four parts: on nature and its creator; the Old Testament; the New Testament; and miscellaneous themes (including, vice, virtue, the Sacraments, Hell, and the death of an only daughter). Particularly notable is the extent of his Marian veneration within a Protestant context, most visibly in his ode to the Virgin Mary (book III, sonnet II, p. 88), renowned for the ‘richness of its language and the clarity of its theology … The method of the poet-theologian touches on classical tradition; so does his understanding of images’ (Marienlexikon, ‘Reformierte Theologie’, p. 427). The footnotes to his sonnet to the Virgin approve of the First Council of Ephesus’s anathematisation of those who would deny Mary the title of Mother of God (Theotokos), and quote Bernard of Clairvaux: ‘Mary is the mythical paradise that produced the tree of life’ (trans.).

Anne Bureau (née Le Morme) married the Niort printer Philippe Bureau in 1652 and succeeded him after his death in 1674. Persecuted for her Huguenot faith, she unsuccessfully attempted to sell her home and workshop to the Catholic printer and bookseller Girard Reverchon; both properties were later ransacked by royal dragoons, and in 1685 converted to Catholicism. She sent several books to Holland for distribution and went into exile c. 1686–7. Both of her sons, also printers, immigrated to England, François (who would later move to New York) in 1683–4 and Thomas in 1687, and it is likely that this copy – with the early English ownership inscription of one Jane Parkland – arrived in England at an early date through her children. The Calvinist Princess Émilie von Hesse-Kassel (1626–1693) became estranged from her French husband after his reconversion to Catholicism; she ‘remained faithful to the Reformed faith … [after his death in 1672] Emilie lived for a time in Paris with her niece. With the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the onset of the persecution of Protestants, she finally returned to Germany’ (Hessische Biographie, trans.). A second edition was published in 1678, and the work remained popular throughout the eighteenth century, later editions frequently issuing Drelincourt’s Sonnets alongside his Psaumes pénitentiaux.

OCLC finds a single copy in the US, at Harvard; no copies traced in the UK.

Cioranescu II, 26285; USTC 6089081; not in BM STC French (cf. D-837 for the 1680 edition). See Clouzot, L’imprimerie à Niort (1891), p. 57.

SKU: 2123576