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A delightful box made to look like a pocket book of devotional works but designed as an elegant vanity bag. The internal space of the box suggests that it used to carry two small flasks of perfume or smelling salts. The design also includes a central hole, presumably for a funnel or pipet and a slim side-pocket which probably contained a small mirror. The contents are unfortunately no longer present but this remains a testimony to an elegant female accessory as well as a delightful falconry binding.

A lovely copy of La Solle’s loosely entwined collection of short stories. A fairly traditional construct, La Solle’s ‘novel’ features three friends, one of whom is sent there for his health, rent a house at Passy and occupy themselves by telling each other stories. There is, however, a particular piquancy in the juxtaposition of the three characters: the narrator, the patient and the patient’s wife. The patient, Monsieur Dursilly, is a distinguished soldier of fifty-two who has been sent to Passy becaue of health problems caused by thirty-five years of soldiering and six months of marriage. His wife is young and pretty. The narrator is invited to Passy by the husband and persuaded to go by the wife. ‘Je connoissois tous mes torts. J’avois vu les défauts de Madame Dursilly en même tems que sa beauté. Je voulois en faire ma maitresse, & non pas mon amie’ (p. 77).
The first tale to be narrated is found in a heap of papers by the roadside and picked up by the narrator. It is a Conte Moral, with the legend: ‘Quand on a perdu sans ressource l’objet d’une passion heureuse & constante, il ne faut plus prétendre aux vrais plaisirs ni au bonheur’, (I, 9-73). Other stories follow, some narrated by the many new acquaintances made in Passy, some by our three central characters. There are also short fictions by way of essays on different subjects, such as: ‘Question Galante. Doit-on préférer la mort de l’objet aimé à son infidélité? (II, 273-292), ‘Pensées sur les Plaisirs’ (III, 38-102) and ‘Comme quoi une jeune personne entre dans le monde par la mauvaise porte’ (II, 396-435).
Based on the more famous Amusemens des Eaux de Spa, La Solle has made a few changes, such as limiting the geographical descriptions before they become boring: ‘Il est juste de faire connoitre ses acteurs, & le lieu de la Scene; mais ces fortes de détails ne doivent être que préliminaires; quand ils reviennent dans le cours de l’action principale, ils en dérangent la marche, & réfroidissent les événemens...’ (p. ix).
La Solle's novel mentioned on the title-page, Mémoires de Versorand, was translated into English by John Hill as Memoirs of a Man of Pleasure, London 1751. He also wrote the rather enticingly titled novel, Bok et Zulba, histoire allegorique traduite du portugais de Don Aurel Eniner, 1740. Another edition of the present novel was published in Paris & Lausanne, 1789. La Solle committed suicide in Paris in 1761.

First edition of this famous satire on Paris society, ‘chef d'œuvre de la littérature galante’ and one of the best-sellers of pre-Revolutionary France. Set in the exotic Indies, where La Morlière creates an imaginary and fantastical world, the nature of which allows him great scope in satirising contemporary French society. The novel opens with the marriage of the just king, Erzeb-can, to Princess Arsenide, a relation of the Fée Lumineuse, queen of a neighbouring nation. It is their son, Angola, the eponymous hero, whose adventures during his travels through the Indies and Arabia make up the body of the narrative. Edouard Thiery called this novel 'le miroir du siècle, le livre des jolies boudoirs, le manuel charmant de la conversation à la mode'. The dedication, bound as usual after the preface and the contents, is addressed ‘aux petites maitresses’ and sets the tone for the ‘free and licencious’ spirit of the text. By far the most successful of La Morlière’s works, it ran to numerous editions throughout the eighteenth century, with at least ten further ‘Agra’ printings in the decade following publication.
‘The reader is continually invited to laugh mockingly at the frivolity of a world where only fashion reigns. La Morlière’s characters exist as functions of their pleasures: the theater, the opera, receptions, reading, hunting, gambling, and - above and before all else - the dynamics and delights of the bedroom. While the narration of these pleasures can never be the equivalent of experiencing them, what La Morlière does offer is a diction of flippancy and cynicism that invites his readers to share an assumed superiority to characters whom in most cases they would be delighted to replace; (Thomas M. Kavanagh, Enlightened Pleasures, 2010, p. 32).
Libertine, musketeer, theatrical critic and associate of Voltaire, La Morlière established his headquarters in the Café Procope where a clique of journalists soon formed around him. He was a great operator in the theatrical world, both in the 'Théâtre français' and the 'Comédie italienne', where he was known for the dubious nature of his dealings. However, his theatrical career came to a fairly abrupt end when he thought that by engineering applause in the usual way he could guarantee the success of his own plays, a mistake for which he paid the price of his career.

Lachèvre's copy of this satirical compilation in verse and prose by François Gacon. The volume also contains 'Recueil des pièces du Sr. Saurin contre Sr. Rousseau', pp. [395]-531. With a folding engraved plate depicting a hearth side scene with a shoemaker's new-born baby and accompanying poem: 'Histoire Veritable et Remarquable, arrivée à l'endroit d'un nommé Roux, fils d'un Cordonnier, lequel aiant renié son Pére, le Diable en prit possession'.
Another edition of the same year, pp. 512, formed the third volume of Les Oeuvres de Sr. Rousseau, Rotterdam, 1712. It was also later published under the title 'Histoire satyrique de la vie et des ouvrages de Mr. Rousseau', Paris 1716.

An important work in the Vespucci controversy, this is the first edition of Bartolozzi’s spirited defence of his Richerche istorico-critiche circa alle scoperte d'Amerigo Vespucci con l'aggiunta di una relazione del medesimo fin ora inedita, Florence, Gaetano Cambiagi, 1789. Bartolozzi’s publication was the first printed version of Vespucci’s Letter from Lisbon, 1502, which is itself a continuation of the letter started in Cape Verdi. Bartolozzi divides the present work into six parts: a general examination of the second letter to the printer, a survey of opinions about trade in the time of Vespucci, a discussion about the island of Haiti (’Isola Antiglia’), an examination of Vespucci’s error in his location of the ‘Cape of Cattigara’, a new examination of Vespucci’s methods in determining longitude and a final discussion of some interesting facts which are revealed in the ‘Letter to the Printer’.

A superbly bound copy of two scarce religious works, with an illustrious provenance. Originally bound for the Cardinal Giuseppe Maria Doria Pamphili (1751-1819) with his arms gilt on both covers. Pamphili was apostolic nuncio in France between 1773 and 1785 and was later Secretary of State for the Holy See. In the nineteenth century, it passed into the library of the major Roman family of the Colonna, who were related to the Doria Pamphili.
The priest and doctor of law Marc-Albert de Villiers was the author of at least four pamphlets blending Christian philosophy, theology and canon law. Both works in this volume are concerned with marriage. The first is a defence of clerical celibacy, against the ‘libels full of the most horrible impieties, the grossest obscenities and the greatest hate towards the Christian and Catholic religion’. The second is a critique of J.-P.-F. de Ripert-Monclar’s Mémoire...sur les mariages clandestins des protestants en France, 1750, which advocated the legalisation of Protestant marriages. He was especially opposed to Protestants who feigned conversion to Catholicism just to be allowed to marry Catholics, returning later to their Protestant convictions.

A scarce libelle against William V, Prince of Orange (1748-1806), the last Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic. François Bernard was a French journalist who spent a number of years in Leyden and Amsterdam, where he taught mathematics, geography and French. He became closely involved in the patriotic movement in the Netherlands and was a key member of a group of French writers including Antoine Marie Cerisier and Dumont-Pigalle, who aimed to influence the broader European community on behalf of the anti-Stadtholder faction. Bernard edited the Gazette d’Amsterdam, 1786-1787 and the revolutionary journal, De Batavier, which was published in Dutch. Although written in French, the text of this important libelle was first published in Dutch in a translation by a lawyer named Blom, as Aan zyne doorluchtige hoogheid Willem den Vyfden, Prins van Oranje, 1783. A German translation, Ehrfurchtsvoller und uneigennütziger Rath an Wilhelm, was also published in 1783.

A scarce Swedish translation of Robert Bage’s first novel, Mount Henneth, first published by Lowndes in 1782. Mostly remembered today for his best-selling Hermsprong, Bage was a successful paper-manufacturer from Staffordshire. He also went into partnership with Erasmus Darwin in an ironworks and slitting mill at Wychnor, but this business was to fail in 1782 on the bankruptcy of one of the other partners. It is thought that perhaps this loss of income was one of the factors that encouraged him to start writing novels. A Quaker by birth and a radical by politics, Bage combined good business with a belief in excellent welfare for his employees. He was also known for his ideas regarding animal welfare, religious tolerance and the education of the poor. He served as a trustee for Reverend Hill’s local charity dedicated to providing schooling for the poor children of Elford village, was a member of the Derby Philosophical Society and in later life studied mathematics under the astronomer Thomas Hanson.

Well-received on publication, Samuel Badcock praised Mount Henneth’s ‘superior merit’ and recommended it with conviction: ‘for we do not remember that we have, for many years, had the satisfaction of reviewing a work of this kind, that abounds with more lively strokes of wit, or sallies of fancy; with more judicious reflections, or pleasing and interesting characters. Its sentiments are liberal and manly, the tendency of it is perfectly moral; for the whole design is to infuse into the heart, by the most engaging examples, the principles of honour and truth, social love, and general benevolence’ (Monthly Review, 66, February 1782, pp. 129-30).

As Bage’s first publication, it is not surprising that this is one of the scarcer of his novels. A German translation was published as Henneth Castle, Leipzig 1783, but there appears to have been no French translation.

An attractive copy, though a nineteenth century binding, of a scarce early publication by Sylvain Marechal. The Bibliothèque des Amans, a compilation of poems celebrating love, consists mainly of 'Odes Erotiques' with a small final section of miscellaneous poems, quatrains, hymns and epitaphs. This is Marechal's second published work, published some seven years after his precocious Bergeries which earned him the nickname of 'Sylvain', the name by which he is known to this day and which is used on the title page of the present work. In the preface, Marechal explains that the volume is not intended to be very big but is long enough to fill just those moments in which Love makes a truce with Pleasure in order to render it more piquant. The miscellany is preceded by an 'Epître aux Femmes' and an 'Envoi' to Madame L.B.D.S.J.; it concludes with a table of verses in which are listed the tunes to which the various poems can be sung.
Includes a poem inspired by events written up in the Gazette de France in Oct. or Nov. 1776. cf. p. 190 (see note in Hollis).

A delightful copy in contemporary green goatskin of this uncommon compilation of classical verse edited by Antoine Augustin Renouard, the industrialist and political activist who became an influential bibliographer and bookseller.

Provenance: with the bookplate of John Trotter Brockett (1788-1842), the Newcastle lawyer and antiquary, also a noted numismatist and book collector. Part of his library was sold at Sotheby’s in 1823, with the 14 day sale raising £4260. An early pencil note on the front endpaper (much faded) reads "Fine & Large Paper" and in ink the initials "P.B."

A handsome copy of the true second edition of his hugely popular and influential novel. First published in Lausanne, ‘aux dépens de l’auteur et chez François La-Combe’, 1786, as simply ‘Caroline’, this is the first edition to use the full title under which the novel was subsequently printed and known. Buisson published two more editions in 1786, one designated ‘seconde édition’ (ESTC t136845) which has title-page vignettes of a landscape with trees (volume I) and buildings and a parley of instruments (volume II) and one designated ‘nouvelle édition, avec des corrections considérables’ (ESTC t136846) with title-page vignettes of an a flower (volume I) and two horsemen and a dog (volume II). The present edition, which was probably printed in Paris, is not the same as ESTC n42696, with its fruit basket title-page ornament and probable manuscript asterisks, but both title pages have the same small vignette, of a garlanded cherub on fronds and the asterisks on the title-page are printed. The translator of Werther, as mentioned on the title-page, is Jacques Georges Deyverdun.

Countless editions were published, in French and English: ESTC lists eight editions of the French text published under British imprints. Most of these imprints are false but they do include some piracies which would be genuine London printings using spurious Paris printers’ names. MMF list 16 editions of the French text between 1786 and 1828. Thomas Holcroft translated the novel into English and his version was treated with critical acclaim. Samuel Babcock in the Monthly Review wrote: ‘In this beautiful and interesting novel, the lights and shades of character are blended with great ingenuity: and in every part of it we discover the hand of an elegant and skilful artist. With wonderful energy and address, the Authoress unfolds the secret springs and complex movements of the human heart; and so forcibly are the different feelings that agitate the soul, delineated by her magic pencil, that they strongly awaken the sympathy of the reader, and interest him in the distress of the story’ (March 1787, pp. 265-266, see Raven & co., 1786:34).

An important source for information on Voltaire’s life, the Commentaire Historique was published when Voltaire was eighty-two. Written in the third person, it was dictated by Voltaire to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière. It is the first autobiography of an author to be published in his lifetime: ‘Jamais encore on n’avait vu une “histoire d’auteur” écrite par l’auteur lui même, et publiée de son vivant’ (André Magnan, Dictionnaire Voltaire, p. 293). Some fifteen years earlier, Voltaire had left unfinished his Mémoires which contained a brief sketch of the main events of his life, but these were not published until 1784.
Unlike Rousseau, Voltaire is very sketchy on his early life. No mention is made of his time in the Bastille or of his exile and there is only a little information on his stay in Prussia. The main focus of the book is on the last twenty years spent at Ferney and on his stand as the herald of human rights. His actions during the Calas and La Barre affairs are well documented as are his various stands against intolerance, superstition and injustice, such as abusive clerical taxation and the selling of state functions. He claims to have abandoned the power and influence derived from acquaintance with the Royal Court in favour of the power of public opinion. He makes a very interesting case for the militant intellectual as a counter-power to the establishment.
The letters which form the second part of this work are of particular significance. Chosen by Voltaire, and in some cases printed with the replies, they include correspondence to and from Linguet, Horace Walpole, Hamilton, Chesterfield and Caylus.

The scarce first edition of this anti-enlightenment novel by the Geneva pastor Jacob Vernes, friend and correspondent of Rousseau and Voltaire. Vernes was a frequent visitor to Ferney and Voltaire welcomed Vernes’ unorthodox approach to religion. Despite their friendship, however, this epistolary novel is a direct attack on Voltaire and the philosophes. The novel emphasises the shallowness of enlightenment ideas and the moral duplicity of their exponents. The anti-hero is a Parisian philosopher, brimming with charm and enlightenment, who takes as a student a pious married woman. Systematically he persuades her of the errors of her Christian faith and as she replaces it with his philosophy, she abandons all the principles of her life that had been grounded in it. Finally, she abandons her family and friends, becomes his lover and gives herself up to a life of dissipation and gambling.
Vernes’ novel struck a chord: it became a best-seller in France, where it saw five pre-Revolutionary editions and was also very popular in England, where at least three editions were published, and the Netherlands. MMF notes that several of the later editions that claim to be ‘augmentées’, have almost nothing new in them but have had the order of the letters rearranged. Clever trick.

A comprehensive treatise on asparagus cultivation by Jean-Jacques Fillassier, educator, moralist and admirer of his Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His few works enjoyed considerable success: his first work Eraste ou l’Ami de la jeunesse, 1773, was reprinted several times and well into the nineteenth century; he also wrote a popular Dictionnaire historique d’éducation, 1771 and a Dictionnaire du jardinier français, 1789. He ran a tree-nursery at Clamart and was a member of several academies. It is interesting that he puts in a puff for the nursery in the Avis to the present work. Stating how hard it is to find asparagus without having it travel a long way, Fillassier advertises his own asparagus plants available for sale at Clamart sou Meudon, near Paris, at the price of 15 livres per thousand.
First published in 1779, this was a very influential work and was published in numerous editions as late as 1815. A detailed study of all aspects of asparagus, Fillassier discusses its origins and nature and the history of its cultivation as well as giving detailed advice on suitable terrain, preparation of the asparagus beds and the care to be taken in its planting, in the first three years after planting and subsequently in the harvesting and cutting of the asparagus. The final chapter of the main text deals with the uses and properties of asparagus. This is followed by a question and answer section on various agricultural aspects, which concludes the work. The author includes detailed footnotes and quotations from other authors throughout.
Despite its evident popularity, this work is now scarce in any edition. This edition is probably the most common, although OCLC lists only four copies in America (at UC San Diego, Hagley Museum, National Agricultural Library, Rutgers), and three copies in France.

Apparently the only edition of this collection of anthems and patriotic songs printed in Strasbourg for the German-speaking population of the French Rhineland. The repurposing of well-known folk tunes for republican songs was a popular practice in the Revolution, but this appears to be one of the first to have been published for use in German-speaking regions of France. While the French-language equivalent of this kind of work would have used almost entirely folk songs, Lamey turns also to Lutheranism for his inspiration: ‘Ein feste Burg’ provides the tune for ‘Lied von der Republic’, while the patriotic hymn ‘An den Schöpfer’ is sung to ‘Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern’.
This copy has a wonderfully elaborate calligraphic ownership inscription on the front free endpaper, translating as ‘This Song Book, written following the New Constitution, belongs to Frau Susanna Katharina Hammännin of Oberhaüßbergen. Written on the ninth of Frimaire in the third year of the Republic’.

A scarce dramatised account of the life, imprisonment and death of young Louis-Charles (1785-1795), son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and briefly titular King of France as Louis XVII following his father’s execution in 1793. Born four years before the French Revolution, he was imprisoned in the Temple Prison with the parents in 1792. Following his father’s execution, he was removed from his mother and put under the care of the cobler and representative of the Paris commune, Antoine Simon, in the hopes that he could be ‘retrained’ and become sympathetic to revolutionary ideals. The harsh and unsanitary conditions in which he was kept undermined his health and died of scrofula a few months after his tenth birthday.
This account, by the German philosopher Gosch, focusses on Louis-Charles’ life after 1791 and includes a number of key figures from his life, not only both his parents, but also his sister, his governess the Marquise de Tourzel, the cruel Antoine Simon and his wife, a friendly monk who brought succour to the royal family, and Maximilien Robespierre. The striking frontispiece shows the young prince dying in his bed and raising his hands to heaven: ‘I have had much to suffer, yet have done nothing bad’. Ironically, it was only a few years after publication of this book that Gosch himself was to die in captivity, in Rendsburg prison.

An important work by the celebrated economist, intended as an introduction to a much earlier work, his Droit publique de l’Europe which was published in 1746. ‘His Principes des negociations... was a courageous attack on the foreign policies of the European powers, and a plea for more rational and honest methods, not only for the sake of justice and humanity, but because they are actually profitable’ (Whitfield, Ernest, Gabriel Bonnot De Mably, New York, 1969). In this work he discusses the principles of international trade, modern warfare and the role of ambassadors and diplomacy. Chapter XVII, ‘Des traités de commerce. Digression sur le luxe’, contains a discussion of the theories of David Hume.
An enormously popular writer in his day, Mably is now hailed variously as communist, republican and utopian. ‘Here also is the beginning of the French School of Utopian Communism properly so called’, says George Catlin, emphasising the importance of Mably’s exposition of the doctrine of equality (see George Catlin, A History of Political Philosophers, London, 1950), while Johnson Wright stakes out new ground for Mably as a republican: ‘Mably should be seen as neither a proto-socialist nor a reactionary thinker, but as a republican - a classical republican, in fact, whose writing represents a later Gallic contribution to the political tradition founded by Machiavelli and Harrington. He is not only interesting as the personification of the revolutionary spirit and as a level-headed reformer, but because he formulated principles which have since been either accepted or re-discovered’ (Wright, History of Political Thought, Volume 13, Number 3, 1992, pp. 391-415).

A scarce separate edition of Guibert’s celebrated treatise on the art of war, first published as part of his Essai général de tactique, précédé d’un discours sur l’état actuel de la politique et de la science militaire en Europe, avec le plan d’un ouvrage intitulé La France politique et militaire, Londres, 1772.
Guibert’s controversial works on military tactics, despite being initially condemned by the French government, eventually led to many reforms in the French army. He is regarded as one of the leading military tacticians of the pre-revolutionary era and his influence extended within Europe to Frederick II and Napoleon and outside Europe, through von Steuben, to the generals of the American Revolution. Guibert’s works were widely read at the time in France and abroad, and a number of foreign translations were published including those into English, German and even Persian.
‘Of this work [Essai général de tactique] it may be said that it was the best essay on war produced by a soldier during a period in which tactics were discussed even in the salon and military literature was more abundant than at any time up to 1871’ (Encyclopædia Britanicca, 1911).
In addition to his military career and his works on tactics and the art of war, the Comte de Guibert was also a member of the Académie française, published journals of his travels in France and Switzerland, wrote a tragedy, Le Connétable de Bourbon, 1775 and had a love affair with Julie de Lespinasse, whose love letters to him were later published.
‘L'oeuvre de Guibert est neuve en son temps par sa visée totaliste articulée autour de la relation fondamentale entre politique et guerre. Guibert a du cependant courir au plus pressé et rédiger l'Essai. On y trouve une distinction entre deux parties de l'art de la guerre pressentie par d'autres en ce siècle des lumières. Guibert parle de tactique élémentaire et de grande tactique. Dans la défense du système de guerre moderne, il nommera celle-ci la stratégie ou tactique des armées. La redécouverte du concept de stratégie à la fin du XVIIIe siècle tient à une nécessité sémantique. L'articulation des armées fait naître des possibilités nouvelles, à un échelon supérieur par rapport à la tactique des armées-blocs’ (L'Art de la guerre de Machiavel à Clausewitz, 89).

The second edition in French of A discourse of free-thinking, occasion’d by the rise and growth of a sect call’d Free-Thinkers, London 1713, by Anthony Collins, philosopher and thinker, friend and pupil of John Locke and one of the most influential deists of his time. This translation, by Rousset de Missy and Scheurleer, was first published in 1714 and includes the Lettre d’un médecin arabe à un fameux Professseur de l’Université de Hall en Saxe, sur les reproches à fait à Mahomet... traduit à l’arabe, 1713, appended to the 1714 edition printed in the Hague. Also included in this edition is the critical reaction to Collins’ work by Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, Examen du Traité de la liberté de penser, which was first published in Amsterdam in 1718.
At the core of Collins’ argument is his defence of free-thinking as a natural right and a religious duty, for which he used as evidence the many disagreements between the clergy. It was largely this that laid him open to accusations of atheism and using freethinking as a platform for a dangerous self-serving and libertine agenda. The work was publicly burnt in England and provoked dozens of replies including those from Jonathan Swift, Benjamin Hoadly, George Berkeley and Richard Bentley. Collins was forced to leave England for the Netherlands until the controversy died down.

The dedication copy, beautifully bound for Prince Giovanni Battista, a member of the prominent Roman family of the Altieri, among whose members was Pope Clement X. The first of these two dissertations, written by the Franciscan Bernardino Mezzadri, discuss the history of the Church and defending it against the theories of the Jesuit, Franciscus Pagius. The second dissertation discusses the life, death and miracles of the martyrs Cosmas and Damian. A long section is devoted to the Roman basilica dedicated to them, details of which are illustrated in two handsome folding plates.