Full tan leather with green and tan title plates, raised gilt banding, gilt lettering and ornate floral decoration on the spine. Both boards have faint black feather type pattern and gilt edging lines. Dimensions are for one volume.

F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feel and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

Les Caractères ou les Mœurs de ce siècle is a work by Jean de La Bruyère first published in 1688 in Paris. La Bruyère worked for seventeen years before publishing this collection of 420 remarks, in the form of maxims, reflections and portraits, presented as a simple continuation of the Characters of the Greek philosopher Theophrastus, which he translated at the head of the work.. The author would have begun the writing of this work as early as 1670, and he died in 1696 after having reviewed and corrected it for a ninth and last edition, posthumous this one. The Characters or Manners of this century went from 420 remarks in 1688 to 1120 in 1694. It is therefore the work of a lifetime, at the same time as the only work that La Bruyère has published.^.

In the preface, the author explains his choice to write remarks:

“These are not maxims that I wanted to write, the custom is that in the manner of oracles they are short and concise; some of these remarks are, a few others are more extensive: we think things in a different way, and we explain them by a trick also quite different”.

To the variety of the observed human and social reality, therefore responds the variety of the form that accounts for it..

The author displays his preference for the Ancients in his book, beginning with the Latin epigraph of Erasmus. Indeed, he says to translate only from Greek the work of Theophrastus. By placing himself directly and openly in the line of this philosopher of antiquity, he underlines his fidelity to the tradition of moral philosophers.. But at the same time, at the end of the Discourse on Theophrastus, he claims his originality by speaking of “new Characters”  ; this term “originality” must be understood both “as a return to the origins and as the establishment of a new origin”, as Emmanuel Bury rightly points out.. This collection of characters was a great success and Jean de La Bruyère during his lifetime published eight editions of his work, enriched with numerous additions as the editions progressed. The success of the work is due to its quality, in particular to the surprising originality of its structure, to its brilliant style, but also to the truth of the painting of contemporary mores: it reflects social and cultural ills, and knows how to criticize the importance of fashion.

Jean de La Bruyère said he was making remarks about the society that surrounded him, that is to say the court where he was in the service of the Duke of Condé, as tutor to his son. Indeed, he says that “the philosopher consumes his life to observe men”. “I give back to the public what they have lent me; I borrowed from him the material of this work” : these are the first words of the preface: this is what he calls a portrait after nature. He wants to associate the pleasing and instructing him: “one must speak, one must write only for instruction; and if it happens that one pleases, one must not nevertheless repent of it, if it serves to insinuate and to make receive the truths which are to be taught. Thus he voluntarily erases himself in his work to objectively describe his society; but the “I” of La Bruyère often pierces under the mask of the moralist. This work has 1200 elements (maxims, reflections, portraits…) that take place in 16 chapters.