Homère; Paul-Jérémie Bitaubé (traducteur) - L'Iliade d'Homere et L'Odyssée d'Homere - 1780-1785

HOMER. Homer’s Iliad, a new translation, preceded by Reflections on Homer, & followed by Remarks; Homer’s Odyssey, a new translation [...] By M. Bitaubé. Paris, Nyon, Durand neveu, Prault, 1780 (Iliad); Paris, Lamy, 1785 (Odyssey). 6 volumes in octavo, triple gilt fillet framing the boards, gilt fillet on the edges, spines with raised bands decorated with gilt ornaments and foliage, title labels reading “Homère de Bitaubé” and volume numbers in a laurel medallion (contemporary binding).

Third edition of the Iliad, revised and corrected; first edition of the Odyssey.

Born in Königsberg to a family of Huguenot refugees, pastor and member of the Royal Academy of Berlin, Paul-Jérémie Bitaubé (1732–1808) devoted most of his career to Homer. He first published a Free Translation of the Iliad (Berlin, 1762), then a first prose version (Paris, Prault, 1764). He subsequently revised his text for this 1780 edition, the year he settled in Paris. The Odyssey, published in 1785, earned him membership in the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres.

Volume I of the Iliad opens with a Preface and Reflections on Homer and on the Translation of Poets, an essay in which Bitaubé sets out his method; critical Remarks accompany the text. The engraved frontispiece depicts the Bust of Homer after one of the marbles belonging to the Earl of Arundel (Thomas Howard, 1585–1646). An engraved headpiece adorns the opening of the Reflections, and each title page has a different vignette (trophy, flower basket, radiant lyre, bouquet, landscapes with a folly). Volume III of the Iliad bears only Prault’s imprint. The title pages of the Odyssey carry as an epigraph a passage from Seneca’s De Providentia (c. 4 BC–65 AD).

The two poems were published five years apart by different booksellers. They are here brought together in a uniform contemporary binding. The Odyssey is in its first edition. The Iliad is presented in the revised version that established the text before the Didot editions of 1787.

Overall in good condition; bindings slightly rubbed, headcaps flattened or worn, corners bumped, wormholes in the leather of volumes I & III, a nick to one spine compartment of volume VI and a scratch on the board; references naming the king on the title pages or privilege pages have been covered; some foxing and other minor defects.