Les Touches du Seigneur des Accords. Premier [Second, Troisiesme] livre [...]. [Bound with:] [...]. Quatriesme livre [including Cagasanga]. [Bound with:] [...]. Cinquiesme livre. [...]

Paris: Chez Jean Richer, 1588. First edition. Title pages with woodcut printer's devices. Woodcut and typographical head- and tailpieces throughout. Woodcut initials. Woodcut portrait of Tabourot in Quatriesme livre (A4v). Bound in contemporary limp vellum, title inked on the spine. Five parts bound into one volume. Binding somewhat discolored, corners slightly bumped. Contemporary shelfmarks in ink on the pastedowns. Humble ownership inscription by a contemporary or somewhat later hand in ink on the title page of the first part. Shelfmark vignette on spine. Title page artistically restored. Overall in fine condition.. First edition. Title pages with woodcut printer's devices. Woodcut and typographical head- and tailpieces throughout. Woodcut initials. Woodcut portrait of Tabourot in Quatriesme livre (A4v). Bound in contemporary limp vellum, title inked on the spine. Five parts bound into one volume. 12°: A-K12, L4; ff. 124; A-E12, F11 [last blank]; ff. 60; 9, (3 [of which the last is blank]); A-F12, G4 [last blank]; ff. 75, (1 [bank]).

The scarce first edition of the complete collection of Tabourot's witty epigrams, along with Cagasanga.

Étienne Tabourot (1549-1590) was a French jurist of Dijon and a satirical writer and poet of the Renaissance. His first book was the Bigarrures to be published in 1582 which was completed in the following years by the Apophtegmes du Sieur Gaulard and the Escraignes dijonnoises, then in 1585 and 1588, he published the first three and the fourth and fifth parts of the present book, the Touches, a collection of epigrams and sayings in the style of Martial. Tabourot wrote under the pseudonym of "Seigneur des Accords" and earned the title of "the Burgundian Rabelais" by his outspoken comments on his contemporaries.

We could locate only one complete copy including all five books, which is kept at the Bibliothèque Nationale, however, it lacks the Cagasanga (which forms signature F at the end of the fourth book). It is also rare on the market, besides this one, we only know about the 2003 Sotheby's copy. In their catalogue, the auction house claimed that "no complete copy has appeared at auction in the French records from 1918 to the present, and no copy has ever appeared in the Morgand-Rahir Bulletins and Répertoire, from 1876 to 1920".

Two editions were printed of the first part of the book (I-III) by the Parisian printer Jean Richer in 1585, they slightly differ in layout and ornamentation, the variant (USTC 1646), which has 11 records by USTC has a misnumbered (224) final folio. The present version is scarcer, according to USTC only 3 copies are kept in institutional holdings.

Ref.: USTC 88454 (I-III); 77256 (IV); 77257 (V)

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