Very rare first edition - Lot 31

Very rare first edition BELLEFOREST (François de) La Pyrénée, et pastorale amoureuse contenant divers accidens amoureux, descriptions de païsages, histoires, fables & occurrences des choses advenues de nostre temps, servant comme l'avant-coureur de l'Adolescence. Sl. [Paris], Mallot, 1571. In-8: 6f., 244pp. Minor spotting. Glazed blond calf signed SIMIER, relieur du roi, repositioned ornate ribbed spine (professional restoration of jaws), triple gilt fillet, gilt numeral at foot of first board, fillet on edges, triple fillet inside, gilt edges. Very rare first edition of this pastoral romance interwoven with verse, set in the Pyrenees, the author's homeland. The work is often considered the first French pastoral novel (cf. Margaret Collins Weitz, "François de Belleforest's La Pyrénée: The First French Pastoral Novel" in Quarterly Renaissance, XXXI, 1978). It seems to be generally confused with the Pastorale amoureuse, a play in Alexandrine verse published by Belleforest two years earlier in 1569. Provenance: Copy of Jules Marsan (1867-1939), with his gilded figure at the bottom of the first cover. This Nervalian bibliophile wrote a study on the Pastorale dramatique (1905), in which he obviously reserved a few pages for the Pyrénée (Picot, Rothschild, no. 3320) (Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., no. 52). Copy from the library of Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller, with his gilded bookplate on Mueller leather. The poetic library of Geneva bibliophile Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller is considered one of the most important in the field! An exceptional person, bibliophile since the age of 13, specialist in 16th-century French poetry and history, this great collector of art and antiquarian books (Ronsard, authors of the Pléiade), still had time to write the catalog of his antiquarian book collection, beautifully entitled "Ma bibliothèque poétique". Since 1973, 7 folio volumes have been published by Droz. The latest ("the seventh volume of the catalog of the Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller collection, the fourth volume of the fourth part of Ma Bibliothèque poétique") is devoted to the discovery of seventeen poets, through forty-seven very detailed bibliographical notes: "The catalog presents, in very detailed notes, a meticulous description, page by page, of each of the works studied.