Hélisenne de CRENNE (Marguerite Briet, known as). Les Œuvres... A sçavoir, Les angoisses douloureuses qui procedent d'amours. Les Epistres familieres & invectives. Le songe de ladicte Dame. Le tout reveu & corrigé de nouveau par elle. In-16, black morocco, gilt coat of arms in the centre of the boards, 5-rib spine decorated with small gilt corner finials (Binding circa 1700). Brun, 163 // Brunet, II-415 // Cioranescu, 7102 // Olivier, 799. (175f. of 176, the last blank missing here) / a-z8, A-X8 / 68 x 117 mm. Sixth edition of the Œuvres d'Hélisenne de Crenne, bound with the arms of the Countess de Verrue. Marguerite Briet, who was born around 1510 in Picardy and died around 1560, married Philippe Fournel, seigneur of Du Cresne, before separating from him in 1552. It was under her married name of Crenne that she published her novels and epistles, of which Les Angoysses douloureuses is the most important. Les Œuvres, comprising the three main writings of Hélisenne de Crenne, namely Les Angoisses douloureuses, les Epistres familieres and le Songe, first appeared together in 1543 with Charles L'Angelier, without illustrations. Étienne Groulleau subsequently published five editions (1550, 1551, 1553, 1555 and our edition of 1560), all illustrated with 8 woodcuts in the text for Les Angoisses douloureuses. A copy bearing the arms of the Comtesse de Verrue. Jeanne-Baptiste d'Albert de Luynes was born in 1670 and married the Count of Verrue in 1683. After refusing the advances of the Duke of Savoy Victor-Amédée II for a long time, she became his mistress and ruled his court until she fled Turin and settled in Paris in 1700. Widowed in 1704 after the death of her husband in the battle of Hochstaedt, she opened her hotel in the rue du Cherche-Midi to intellectuals and literati, and brought together the court and the finest minds of the time in her salon. Witty and well-educated, she turned her hotel into a veritable museum filled with paintings, antiques and objets d'art; every year she devoted 100,000 books to her library (Larousse). A protector of poets and philosophers, she lavished so many entertainments, dinners and parties with great generosity that they earned her the nickname Dame de volupté. She died in 1736, leaving behind a library of over 18,000 volumes, most of them bound in her coat of arms, which was sold the following year. A very fine copy which subsequently passed through the libraries of Gaignat, Brunet, Marigues de Champ-Repus, Hoe and Cortlandt Bishop. Minor rubbing to the spine ends. Small restoration in the inner margin of the title, a few ink stains on the first 2 leaves and lack in the upper margin of the last leaf. Provenance: Claude (? handwritten ex-libris faded on the title dated 1613), Comtesse de Verrue (arms, sale in 1737, no. 253), Louis-Jean Gaignat (? in fine, 10 April 1769, no. 2501, no mention of arms), Jacques-Charles Brunet (20-24 April 1868, no. 540), Eugène Marigues de Champ-Repus (bookplate), Robert Hoe (bookplate, II, 8 January 1912, no. 933) and Cortlandt F. Bischop (bookplate, I, 5-8 April 1938, no. 519).