Cats, Jacob

Spiegel Van den Ouden en Nieuwen Tydt; Gedachten op Slapeloose Nachten & Twee-en Tagtig-Jaarig Leven; Two books (three titles) bound together [Emblem Book]

Amsterdam: Jacobus Konynenberg; Andries van Damme, N.D.; 1725. Leather Bound. pp. 320; 235. 8vo. Full brown leather with red spine label and gilt lettering and decoration. 107 engravings throughout, most in-text with three full-page engraved title pages. Leather dry with some loss and some surface cracking, binding sound, contents show some expected age-toning; very good. Item #038362

The first title in this book is Cats' most famous: "Mirror of Old and New Times", written in colloquial Dutch, and phrases from which were turned into colloquialisms still used. Bound with "Thoughts on Sleepless Nights" published and paginated together with "Eighty-two years of my life". Jacob (or "Jacobus") Cats, affectionately known to the Dutch as "Father Cats", was a seventeenth-century Dutch poet, chiefly of emblem books: collections of engravings accompanied by moralistic verses, which provide a window into the Calvinist moral and philosophical mores of the era. Cats was the first to mix this form with love poetry, which made his works enormously popular and influential: his stories were retold like nursery rhymes, his verses set to music. Cats' retirement villa is now the residence of the Dutch Prime Minister, and the surrounding gardens a public park.

Price (USD): $187.50
C$ 251.69
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