Gabriel-François Coyer - Histoire de Jean Sobieski, roi de Pologne - 1761

Gabriel-François Coyer – History of Jean Sobieski, King of Poland
Paris / Warsaw, Duchesne, 1761 — complete in three volumes, first edition

Handsome contemporary full calf bindings (calf leather, marbled boards), gilt-decorated spines with contrasting red and brown title labels. Small 12mo format, approximately 6.7 × 3.9 inches.
Volume I with the engraved frontispiece portrait of King John III Sobieski — Garand del. / Chenu sculp.
Volume III includes the original errata (p. 320) and the rare publisher’s catalogue 'Livres nouveaux Duchesne' (pp. 393–408), seldom preserved in surviving copies.

Collation / pagination

Vol. I: A–T⁴, i–xij; [1]²–440 pp. — dedication to His Highness Monseigneur the Prince of Bouillon; Books I–III
Volume II: A–R²; [1]⁴–386 pages — Books IV–VI
Vol. III: A–R⁴; [1]⁴–319 pp., p. 320 Errata; [321]–392 + [393]–408 (publisher’s catalogue including p. 403 Avertissement) — Books VII–IX

Significance and rarity: A classic 18th-century French biography of King John III Sobieski — an important source on the Polish king’s reception in Enlightenment France. In Poland, the work has never been critically edited or thoroughly studied; the only 19th-century Polish printing appeared much later (Vilnius, 1852, Teofil Glücksberg) but remains bibliographically and textually unexamined. Complete sets of all three Duchesne volumes are uncommon on the market — usually only single volumes appear.


Condition: Good and complete copy in period full calf with marbled boards and gilt spines with red and brown labels. All edges tinted red. Minor rubbing to corners and spine ends, some loss of gilt on spines, small cracks to headcaps but bindings remain solid and blocks tight. Paper lightly toned with age, occasional minor spotting, but overall clean and well-preserved. Engraved frontispiece present and clean. No ex-libris, no contemporary inscriptions.