I. Cooper Oakley - The Comte de St. Germain. The Secret of Kings. A monograph [...] With numerous illustrations

I. Cooper Oakley - The Comte de St. Germain. The Secret of Kings. A monograph [...] With numerous illustrations - Milano - "Ars Regia" Casa Editrice del Dott. G. Sulli-Rao - 1912 - 1st edition - 286pp - Half leather binding - 13 x 19,5 cm.

Condition: Excellent.

Very rare first edition of the first biography of St. Germain by Isabel Cooper Oakley (1854-1914), based on letters and diary entries from French aristocrats who knew him in the 18th century. Illustrated with black and white photographs, reproductions, portrait frontispiece and fold-out facsimile of a letter. With bibliography and table of contents.

Bound in red half leather binding with gilded title and 5 raised bands on the spine, the covers and endpapers embellished with decorative paper. Our copy, moreover, with beautiful theosophical ex-libris (with occult symbolism) of Mr. Dr. A. Albers on the first paste-down.

¶ The mysterious Count Saint Germain (1710-1784), linked to Freemasonry, Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare, was recognized by the Theosophical Society, of which Cooper-Oakley was a prominent member, as one of many immortals whose destiny on Earth was to help humanity. He appears in correspondence from Voltaire, Marie Antoinette, Cassanova, Madame de Pompadour, Franz Anton Mesmer and J.J. Rousseau.