LILLE. - Lot 80

LILLE. Recueil des principales ordonnances des magistrats de la ville de Lille. Lille, J. B. Henry, 1771. In-4, red morocco, triple gilt fillet, gilt and silver coat of arms in center, ornate spine, black title page, interior roulette, gilt edges (period binding). Important collection of ordinances concerning the city of Lille, published by the magistrates of Lille and printed for them. The work is divided into 17 chapters: religion, morals (cabarets, cafés, shows, public baths, balls, masquerades, lotteries, etc.), health, food (bakers, butchers, fishmongers, cabaretiers, etc.), roads, market police, river police, city police, liberal arts (doctors, apothecaries, booksellers and printers), trade, etc. A long chapter deals with the manufacture of foodstuffs. A long chapter deals with textile and leather manufactures (pp. 508-720), the city's main industrial and commercial activity from the Middle Ages onwards: weavers, weavers, cloth manufacturers, dyers, spinners and tanners. There is also a chapter on taxes on beverages (beer, wine and brandy), as well as one on begging. A very fine copy in morocco with the arms of the magistrates of the city of Lille. From the Roger Laloy library (1851-1909), with his large bookplate engraved by Em. Théodore: in the style of the Danse Macabre, it depicts Death coming to snatch the bibliophile from his books, with the mention lex (the law), a pun on the reader's name. Roger Laloy was one of the most distinguished bibliophiles in the North of France; at his Château de La Rose, in Houplines, he had assembled a library of some 6,000 volumes (cf. Archives de la Société française des collectionneurs d'ex-libris, vol. 12-13, 1905).