Librairie Camille Sourget Archives

Le Théâtre d’agriculture et Mesnage des champs. D’Olivier de Serres Seigneur du Pradel.

Rare first edition of « Olivier de Serres' extremely remarkable Theatre d'agriculture". (Pierre Larousse), the first modern treatise on agriculture honoring the French language. Tchemerzine, V, p. 817; Pritzel 8630; Mortimer French Books, 494; Thiebaud 840; Schwerdt II-156/157; Kress 236; En Français dans le texte 79. 'Serres's prose, in the wake of Montaigne and Saint François de Sales, is clear and beautiful. The title of the Théâtre d'Agriculture, made up of two groups of common words united in a happy and unexpected way, shows a high mastery of language. More than twenty successive editions attest to its success'. (In French in the text, B.n.F.). A Protestant gentleman from the Ardèche, Olivier de Serres fought in the ranks of the Reformed in his youth, and in 1573 was still present at the siege of Villeneuve-de-Berg, which was followed by horrific massacres. He then took over the cultivation of his Pradel estate for around a quarter of a century, methodically practicing crop rotation. His interest extended to irrigation, livestock farming, forests and vineyards. He was particularly interested in the medicinal or bouquetier garden. He was familiar with maize and beetroot and, almost two centuries before Parmentier, with the potato, which he compared to the truffle and called cartoufle. He was interested in the use and preservation of farm produce and discovered ingenious recipes. He studied beehives and silkworms, acquiring great expertise in sericulture. In 1599, he published a small volume of one hundred pages, which was immediately translated into English and German, entitled Cueillette de la soye par la nourriture des vers qui la font. Henri IV wrote to him and asked for his help in one of the great economic undertakings of the reign, which was the planting of huge quantities of mulberry trees. At the age of sixty, the agronomist became the royal adviser. He brought together the fruits of his experience in his Théâtre d'Agriculture, where he taught a vast and hitherto unknown range of subjects. This is the first major French treatise on agronomy. The book is adorned with a frontispiece engraved by Mallery and woodcuts in the text; at the head of each of the eight chapters, a headpiece, also wood-engraved, shows scenes of rural life. (En FRançais dans le texte. B.n.F.) His 'Théâtre d'agriculture et Ménage des champs', where he consigns with delicious simplicity the results of 40 years of research and practice, brings him glory which would not end until the end of the 17th century, before the vogue, then, of 'La Maison rustique' by Ch. Estienne and Liébault. "It is divided into 8 parts, each illustrated with a wood engraved headpiece related to the title: (1) knowledge and choice of the lands, (2) ploughing wheat lands (bread and vegetables), (3) vine cultivation, (4) four-legged cattle and pastures, (5) henhouse, dovecote, warren, pond, apiary and silkworm, (6) vegetable garden, orchard, condiment herbs (including saffron), medicinal and dyeing herbs (woad, madder), (7) water and wood, including cutting and maintenance, (8) food uses, including recipes for various breads, drinks (hypocras, malvasia, mead, jams, fruit or meat preserves, syrups, sauerkraut, truffles, etc.), ways of preparing food and beverages, how to decorate houses and clothes in the country, medicine for people and animals and 'good manners in the solitude of the countryside". But Olivier de Serres never for a moment stopped looking after his property at Le Pradel, while at the same time devoting his last years to propagating silk growing in the region. He came at a decisive time in the French economy, when rural life was beginning to flourish again, and the looting and devastation caused by the war were allowing a renewal of the farming tools and methods that had remained unchanged since the Middle Ages. Olivier de Serres' action, at first isolated, became a symbol of the economic revival that Henri IV sought to bring about. 'You don't need to