Binding stamped with the stage name of Mademoiselle Volnais.

[Binding] / [Theater] / [France] /Mademoiselle Volnais / Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée. L’Ecole Des Meres, Comedie En Vers En Cinq Actes. Représentée pour la premiere fois au Théatre François, le 27 Avril 1744. & reprise le 9 Décembre de la même année. Paris: Chez Prault fils, Quai de Conti, à la Charité, 1745. 12mo [16.5 x 10.0 cm], [4] ff., 108 pp., [1] f. (“Compliment au Roi), [1] f. integral blank, with woodcut title-page device, headpieces and initials. Bound in early 19th-century mottled calf, red morocco lettering piece laid to spine, gold-tooled spine, cover borders, and board edges, marbled endpapers, yellow edges, green silk bookmark. Losses to surface of spine and lower cover, elsewhere only minor rubbing and edge wear, pencil annotations on front flyleaf. Internally well preserved.

Rare first edition of Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée’s (1692-1754) comedy L’école des mères—here in a copy gold stamped on its front cover with the name “M.lle Volnais,” the stage name of the actress Claudine-Placide Croizet-Ferreire (1786-1837)—who made her debut in 1801 at Versailles at the age of 15.

I have encountered no other volumes carrying the name of Mademoiselle Volnais, nor have I found any trace of a library belonging to her. This perhaps suggests that the present item was a gift from an admirer, or a stage copy of some sort. What is certain is that it is bibliographically quite unusual to find a book stamped in this way with an actress’s pseudonym.

In 1802 Mademoiselle Volnais joined the Théâtre-Français, and she appeared in scores of productions before her marriage and retirement from the stage in 1822 (the book was thus likely personalized before this date). She appeared, for example, in the title roles of Racine’s Andromaque and his Iphigénie, and she played Ophélie in Jean-François Ducis version of Hamlet. La Chaussée’s L’école des mères was regularly produced at the Théâtre-Français during Mademoiselle Volnais’s time there, but I have been unable to confirm that she appeared in it.

OCLC and KVK locate U.S. examples of thus title at Yale and Chicago; a competing first edition (no priority given) with a differing pagination appeared from the press of Prault fils in the same year (see I. Bernard), p. 24.

*Georges Monval, Comédie-française (1658-1900) Liste alphabétique des sociétaires depuis Molière jusqu’à nos jours, p. 119, no. 349; Isabelle Bernard, ed., L’école des mères, comédie, 1744, (1982), p. 24; Henry Lyonnet, Dictionnaire des comédiens français, ceux d’hier: Biographie, bibliographie, iconographie, vol. 2 (E-Z), p. 712.

$1,350.00