Three Lovely buying French Red Leather & Gilt Antique Books for decor or reading. Voltaire's Candide, Theatre de Racine, Memoires De Chavalier.

A really gorgeous collection for anyone's bookshelf! Three red leather and printed board volumes (one is covered in red cloth - please see photos) with gilt page top edges and gilt detailing on their spines. They all also have raised bands to the spines and printed colour endpapers. All are in quite good condition for their age with wearing to the corners and discolouration to pages.

Voltaire's Candide: is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated. It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism by his mentor, Professor Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow and painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes Candide with, if not rejecting Leibnizian optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best" in the "best of all possible worlds".

Theatre de Racine: Jean Racine, baptized Jean-Baptiste Racine, was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille, and an important literary figure in the Western tradition. Theatre de Complet (this edition) contains all of his plays in one volume.

Antoine (or Anthony) Hamilton ( 1645 – 1719) was a soldier and a writer. As a Catholic of Irish and Scottish ancestry, he fled with his family to France during the Interregnum and later sided with James II against the Prince of Orange, which led him into another French exile. As a writer he chose French as his language and adopted a light and elegant style, seeking to amuse and entertain his reader. He is mainly known for the Mémoires du comte de Grammont, which tell about the time his brother-in-law Philibert, comte de Gramont, spent at buying the court of Charles II at Whitehall.

All three are of literary and historical interest and as such, a lovely addition to anyone's personal library.

Please note that we sell vintage books and as such these are rarely perfect. This is a lovely book but is old so please see the photos to make sure you'll be happy with its condition.

Please contact us if you're outside of the UK and buying more than one item for other shipping options.

We wrap well but use recycled/upcycled packaging so, while your book will be protected, it might not look pretty until you unwrap it!

Thank you!
Ax
PS. As part of our commitment to the Global Sustainable Development Goals we'll finance the planting of a tree via the B1G1 platform.