Guillaume COQUILLART. Sensuyuent les droitz Nouveaulx avec le Debat des dames et des armes Lēqueste entre la simple et la rusee avec son playdoye Et le monologue coqllart avec plusieurs autres choses fort ioyeuses. Small in-4, red morocco, triple fillet, very nicely decorated smooth spine, interior roulette, gilt edges (18th century binding). Bechtel, 181/C-637 // Brunet, II-263 // Le Petit, 12 // Tchemerzine-Scheler, II-505 // USTC, 57796. (88f.) / aa-bb4, A-U4 / 32 lines, gothic car / 114 x 173 mm. First or second edition, depending on the bibliography. It is believed to be the only known copy, together with the one in the BnF. Guillaume Coquillart, born in Reims around 1450, died in 1510. He studied in Paris and became a lawyer renowned for his knowledge and experience, but, disillusioned by this city where he knew the perfidies of love and the injustice and partiality of the great, he returned to his native town where he held the office of official, i.e. ecclesiastical judge. His poems paint broad strokes of the loose morals of his century or are short poems containing innocent mischief and bitter mockery. The Droits nouveaux are a series of short plays of varying degrees of licentiousness on the subjects of love and the rights of women and men in relation to their spouse or lover. There is a Complainte de Eco qui ne peut iouyr de ses amours, le droit de savoir si on doit laisser ieunes filles & femmes en friche par faulte destre labourées, le droit si le mariy bat sa femme elle doit revencher, à savoir si ieune fēme peult cõtraidre sõ mary a avoir nourrices de peur de ses tetins... The volume also contains a playdoye et enqueste between the simple and the cunning, a legal dispute concerning a man whom each of them claims to have as a lover. This very rare first edition was given by Brunet as dating from 1493, but as Trepperel died in 1511 and the edition was published by his widow, it is certain that the edition dates from at least 1512. Bechtel cites another edition, in-4 of 36 leaves, which would have preceded this one, but Le Petit, in his work on the original French editions, demonstrates perfectly that this edition in 36 leaves was published after ours. Title in red and black with two coats of arms, one of which reproduces the arms of J. Godart who was canon and high cantor of Notre-Dame de Reims. On the reverse of the title, a coat of arms with the lilies of France. Book bb is printed on stronger, slightly yellow paper, a feature not mentioned in the Cigongne and Firmin-Didot catalogues. We have compared it with the copy preserved at Chantilly and it shows differences in the fineness of the characters and in the lettering; we think that it was rebound, probably in the eighteenth century, when it was bound. This in no way detracts from the rarity of this copy. Provenance: Armand Bernard Cigongne (bookplate, catalogue of his library, no. 582) and Ambroise Firmin-Didot (bookplate, 6-15 June 1878, no. 165).