This article presents an account of a hitherto unpublished library list in the Bibliothàque nationale de France: MS fr. 4188. The list, preceded by an inventory of mathematical instruments, provides entries for a little under 1,000 books of poetry, theology, philosophy, history, antiquarianism, mathematics, and the trivial arts, published between 1474 and 1621. The entries are distinguished by a high degree of bibliographical detail, including information about the books’ bindings. Dominated by Latin imprints, the library also includes a number of titles in French (the probable nationality of the owner) and English, including works by Shakespeare, Spenser and Sidney. It constitutes very early—perhaps the earliest—evidence for continental ownership of Shakespeare's poems The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis. The English works are discussed in relation to the other learned interests of the owner, whose identity, profession and confession are speculated upon.