Willems (Alphonse Charles Joseph), 1839-1912

Two volumes (26 cm), I: cclix (1) pp., plus frontispiece (coat of arms in colour, tissue guardsheet present), 2 plates (bound after pp.lii, clxxxviii), folding facsimile of 1681 type specimen, folding “Tableau généalogique” (printed red & black). II: (4) 607 (1) pp. Uniform cloth-backed marbled paper boards (fragments of original printed wrappers pasted on upper covers). - First edition. “Modeled no doubt on Renouard’s bibliography of the Aldine press, especially its third edition, Willems’s Elzevier bibliography has itself become a model for exactitude of bibliographical description, combined with historical and literary research. It describes 2,186 publications of the Elzevier family of printers, publishers and booksellers, their associates and successors in Leyden, The Hague, Amsterdam, and Brussels, 1583-1770” (B.H. Breslauer & R. Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development, New York 1984, p.174). ¶ Ink stamps of the Mehrkreisbücherei, Wiesbaden (on title-pages and on folding plates).