

Bring your auction to collectors worldwide!
Get listed now
Bring your auction to collectors worldwide!
Get listed now
All auctions / Books, Maps & Manuscripts / MANUSCRIPT. — Collection of Selected Airs. No place, no date - Lot 102


MANUSCRIPT. — Collection of Selected Airs. No place, no date [18th century]. 5 in-8 volumes of 125 (108 + 17), 221 (208 + 13), 122 (109 + 13), 118 (108 + 10), and 124 (118 + 6) pages, red morocco leather, gilt fillet and floral motifs at the corners, spine decorated with small metal filigree, inner roulette, lining and endpapers of gilt-patterned paper, gilt edges on marbled paper (contemporary binding). A charming 18th-century manuscript collection containing approximately 250 tunes and songs about love and wine in particular, some of which are quite lighthearted: playful songs, brunettes, minuets, tender tunes, duets, sarabandes, etc. Examples include a “Drinking Duet,” “Love the Cook,” a song about the downy hair curling beneath a shirt, or this vaudeville: My husband is an old owl [...] to get even with him, I’ve got a lover whose d*ck is always hard—that really gets me going (Volume I, pp. 102–103). Each volume opens with a title set within a frame painted in color and adorned with a hand-drawn and colored floral arrangement, and concludes with a carefully laid-out table of contents. Lyrics and musical notation are set within a triple black ink border. This copy bears an engraved bookplate reading “Louise Adélaïde de Bourbon”: despite the presence of this bookplate, it seems unlikely that such a collection could have belonged to this abbess (1754–1824), founder of the Benedictine community on Rue Monsieur. Two songs written in another hand on 6 pages at the beginning of the first volume and at the end of the fifth. The ink has bled through the paper on a few pages, but this is not a serious issue.
Estimate:£1,714.76
To the auctionView all items fromGiquelloorBooks, Maps & Manuscripts
Estimate:
£1,714.76

Bring your auction to collectors worldwide!
Get listed now
OLOF RUDBECK D.Y. Faksimilutgåvor, portfölj med planscher samt 2 st
09/29/2026
£120.51
Est: £227.23
OLEV SOANS (ESTLAND, 1925–1995). "Historia navigationis Velieferae
09/29/2026
£157.19
Est: £189.36