La Grande DANSE MACABRE DES HOMMES ET DES FEMMES, précédée du Dict des trois Mors et des trois Vifz, du Débat du Corps et de l'Ame, et de la Complaincte de l'Ame Dampnée

Paris Baillieu, N.d. [1862]. 4to., contemporary three-quarter black calf over marbled boards; on the front paste-down is wonderful etched Memento Mori bookplate depicting a standing skeleton with outstretched arms that have sprouted foliage, standing amid a pile of books. According to the AAA Sale Catalogue of the Susan Minns collection of Dance of Death books [item 146], this edition reproduces "the text of the original 1486 Marchant edition, with woodcuts printed from the blocks cut for the Troyes editions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." This 66 page (misnumbered 67) edition is one of several facsimile "Danse macabre des hommes et des (truncated) femmes," which were very popular in the last century. According to Aldred Warthin [The Physician and the Dance of Death. p. 29], "In many of the old editions of the Danse Macabre, the figure of a Negro blowing a trumpet and holding a javelin is introduced, usually at the beginning of the Danse des Femmes. This figure is said to have been painted on the vaulted roof of the charnel-house of the innocents." The cut appears on page 25 of our edition, reprinted from the wood blocks of the 1641 edition first published in Troyes, along with the 55 ADDITIONAL EVOCATIVE WOODCUTS of Death coming to claim all manner of men and women. Of further interest is the title-page woodcut in which the words, "Danse Macabre," are formed by tiny Dance of Death figures engaged in different activities. PRINTED FROM THE BLOCKS OF THE 17TH C. TROYES EDN. (Inventory #: 750.N.d. [1862])