Alain CHARTIER [Achille CAULIER]. Cy cõmence lospital damours. Booklet in-8, red morocco, triple fillet on the edge of the covers and wide right-hand frame formed by two double fillets criss-crossing in the middle, the fields between them decorated in small irons with fillets, flowers, circles, dots..., spine with 5 nerves finely decorated in small irons, inner lace, gilt edges (Thibaron - Dor. Wampflug). Bechtel, 369/H-58 // Brunet, III-345 // CIBN, I-C-282 // Tchemerzine-Scheler, II-276. (34f.) / a-c8, d10 / 20 to 22 lines, gothic car / 130 x 189 mm. Second edition and first in Gothic script of this poem attributed by early bibliographies to Alain Chartier, because it was published in his works, and now listed under the name of its true author, Achille Caulier, a priest from Tournai to whom we owe two other works, La Cruelle femme en amour and Lay en l'onneur de la Vierge Marie. L'Hôpital d'amour is a kind of response to Alain Chartier's La Belle dame sans mercy. The poet falls in love with a lady who proves inflexible to his love. He returns home and, in a dream, walks the path of trop-dure-responce, strewn with pitfalls and corpses in which he recognises unhappy lovers, Philis, Héro and Léandre, Narcisse, Pyrame and Thisbé..., then arrives at the Hôpital d'amours where he is greeted by the Bel Accueil porter, the Courtoisie nurse, etc., who make him take a drug. He then returns to his lady and gets a frank kiss. He then visits the Amours cemetery, recognising the tombs of Tristan, Lancelot... and even Alain Chartier... then, after a few more adventures, gets another kiss from his lady and wakes up. The attribution to Alain Chartier is all the more questionable as the poet claims to have met him dead in the cemetery of loves. The real author's name can be guessed from the acrostic in the first lines of the first 6 stanzas forming the name ACILLE. The original edition was published in Lyon between 1489 and 1492. It was followed by the edition we are presenting here, which was published in the same city by Gaspar Ortuin around 1490, a date based on the wear of the characters. The title has a large lettering and the verso a curious woodcut depicting Cupid, blindfolded, aiming his arrows at a crowd of men and women from all walks of life. In the background Pyramus, Thisbe and the lioness are skewered on a pike. A superb copy in a fine gilt Thibaron binding by Wampflug who worked with Lortic before setting up on his own in 1855. A bump to the upper cut of the second plate. Wood engraving partly formerly coloured and partly faded. Provenance: Léon Cailhava (21 October 1845, no. 303), Nicolas Yemeniz (no. 1626) in lemon morocco, then Étienne-Marie Bancel in his present binding (ex-libris, 8 May 1882, no. 240).