Rare and sought-after - Lot 15

Rare and sought-after ARMENGAUD Escapades d'un Homme Sérieux. Paris, Dentu, 1861. In-12: 400pp. ½ period plum basane, lise spine, gilt fillets, gilt crowned figure of Édouard de Tocqueville and bookplate from the library of Château de Baugy. A good copy. Very rare and sought-after for its passages on the Alps and the Pyrenees. Around a hundred pages concern the latter. Mont-Perdu with Laurent Passet. The traveler knows his classics well. Much of the narrative is in dialogue. Lorenz gives it as a "pseudonym". Labarère devotes an important note to this work in the Russell bio-bibliography (he does not mention it in the "essai de bibliographie"): "a work as rare as it is little known, whose title does not suggest that it contains pages of great importance for the history of Henry Russell and Pyreneanism. The first work to speak of Henry Russell, (these Escapades) raise troubling questions about the first ascent of Mont-Perdu via Astazou". Labarère mentions a second edition of 1864, which does not appear in the B.N. (Lorenz I 70)(Labarère: Henry Russell. Bio-Bibliographie p. 154 to 158). This copy sold for €1250 in 2010. Provenance: Édouard de Tocqueville (1800-1874), brother of Alexis de Tocqueville, philosopher and politician. He was an officer in Charles X's Garde-du-Corps. Through his marriage, he became the manager of a large estate at Château de Baugy in the Oise region (printed bookplate of this library in the volume). He founded the Beauvais Agricultural Institute, run by the Brothers of Christian Doctrine. He was also mayor of Baugy and a member of the Oise General Council until his death.