Maggs Bros finds treasures from Marie Antoinette’s libraries

Three volumes bound in leather and gilt, their spines stamped with the royal insignia of France, hold the catalogues of Marie Antoinette’s personal libraries. Published across two decades from 1862 to 1884, these numbered editions document the Queen’s reading tastes across three distinct spaces: her intimate boudoir, the Petit Trianon where she retreated from court ceremony, and the vast collection at the Tuileries. Each catalogue speaks to a different facet of her intellectual life, from the private sanctuary of her chambers to the formal grandeur of the palace itself.

Among Maggs Bros’ continental offerings is a copy of Ann Radcliffe’s gothic masterpiece, The Mysteries of Udolpho, rendered into French by Victorine de Chastenay, a writer and essayist whose own pen was sharp and celebrated. The extra illustrations adorning this edition of the rare first French translation elevate the text beyond its original form, transforming the pages into a dialogue between Radcliffe’s shadowed Alpine landscapes and the imaginative embellishments of later hands.

From an earlier age comes a leaf of profound delicacy: a page from the von Lanna Busch Book of Hours, illuminated in the workshop of the Master of the Older Prayerbook of Maximilian. The border unfolds as strewn flowers across a deep green ground, each blossom rendered with the luminous precision of late fifteenth century Flemish technique, accompanied by birds in jewelled blues and browns. The craftsmanship belongs to the moment when manuscript illumination achieved its finest flowering, before print began its quiet revolution.

Maggs Bros is at the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair at the Hynes Convention Center through 4pm today.

Imagery courtesy of Maggs Bros (@maggsbros).