Édit du Roy, pour le règlement des Imprimeurs et des Libraires de Paris, registré en Parlement le 21 Août 1686. Avec les autoritez des anciennes ordonnances, statuts, arrests et reglemens.: Bound with: Édit du Roy, pour le règlement des Relieurs et Doreurs de livres. Registré en Parlement le 7 septembre 1686.

(4), 108, (8) pages with woodcut heraldic vignette on title and woodcut head- and tail-piece; 8 pages.Cont. calf on five raised bands, red gilt morocco label to second compartment, all others richly gilt. Sprinkled edges. 4to (255 x 188 mm). Extremeties rubbed.


I. Barbier, II, 30. First edition, published a year after the promulgation, of the royal edict of August 1686. This edict, despite its title, applies to the entire kingdom. "Within a very difficult context as far as the book trade in the provinces was concerned - since the latter was being stifled by the stringent economic policies of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the famous Superintendent of Finances under Louis XIV, which also extended to control of the press and were biased in favour of the major Parisian publishers whose privileges kept on being renewed - the regulations of 1686, structured into sixty-nine articles under various headings, were the last major set of book trade regulations to be promulgated in France in the seventeenth century. First of all, just like the 1618 regulations, they renewed the articles of association of the Parisian Guild. Then, following on from the decree of 27 February 1665, they were also meant to put an end to the contestations made by the Parlement of Paris with regard to the duration of printing privileges and the requirements for the award of these. Finally, under this new system authors did not enjoy a more favourable status than had been the case in the preceding set of regulations: in particular, they continued to be barred from the possibility of selling their own works" (Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org).


II. Katalog Bibliothek d. Boersenvereins I, 87. First edition. This edict which contains 17 articles is a kind of founding document of the guild of bookbinders and gilders and regulates relationship between them and the guild of printers to which they formerly belonged. Two modern book labels mounted onto front paste-down. A broadmargined copy.