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An attractive copy of Louvet de Couvray's novel, with the rare and rather striking frontispieces present in each volume. Uncommon in any state, it is particularly hard to find with the plates, which are not mentioned in any of the references noted below but which evidently belong here and greatly add to the dramatic impact of the narrative.
Taking as its subject matter divorce and the marriage of priests, it is a racy tale with forced vocations and amorous adventures. Set in provincial France, it is written as an epistolary novel featuring Dorothée and Emilie de Varmont, Monsieur Bovile and Madame d'Etioles. It had considerable political influence in France, producing two memorable decrees of the National Convention, the one authorising divorce and the other allowing priests to marry. A piracy of the text gave rise to a court case (Dalloz, Jurisprudence générale du royaume, 1830, XI, 481 and note). Further editions appeared in 1792, 1794 and 1815. It was published more recently by the Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, 2001. An English translation was published under the title Emily de Varmont, or Divorce dictated by Necessity, to which are added, the Memoirs of Father Sévin, London, G. Kearsley, 1798 and an American edition, in a translation by Melatiah Nash, was published in New York in 1799 under the title Emilia de Varmont, or the Necessary Divorce, and Memoirs of Curate Sevin: a Moral and Political Tale.

This is the first edition of Maupertuis’ scarce philosophical treatise to be published with his consent. The work first appeared in Berlin in 1749, printed from a manuscript copy of the text lent to President Hénault and containing numerous errors. The events surrounding this earlier publication and Maupertuis’ own resolution in printing the present official version are explained in the lengthy preface. The work is dedicated to Frédéric II, addressed as, ‘Illustre Ami’, who himself translated Maupertuis’ work.
Written during what was probably the happiest period of his life, when he was living in Berlin and enjoying the close friendship of Frédéric II, the Essai de Philosophie Morale is in effect Maupertuis’ philosophical testament. He examines the nature of good and evil, happiness and unhappiness, pessimism, stoicism, sensuality, pleasure and pain, arguing that in ordinary life the sum of pleasures surpasses the sum of misfortune and suffering. He goes on to explore ways in which the human condition might be improved and discusses the role that religion might play in this.

An attractive copy of this scarce essay on aesthetics by the philosopher-priest, Cartaud de la Vilate. In his Pensées critiques sur les mathématiques, 1733, he calls into question the certainties of mathematics and debates its usefulness. His Essai historique et philosophique sur le Goût, which first appeared in an Amsterdam edition of 1736, attracted considerable attention and was several times reprinted, as late as 1970 when Slatkine reprinted it. Grimm said of it: ‘L’auteur est dans un délire continuel. Son style est vif, rapide... marche au hasard’ (DLF, p. 272).
‘L’on peut aisément juger par la façon don [sic] ce livre est écrit, que je l’ai destiné à ces lecteurs distraits & peu sérieux, qui aiment à voltiger sur divers sujets sans trop les approfondir. Le mérite d’amuser cette partie du public, m’a paru de quelque importance. J’ai employé un style propre à ce dessein, où il s’agit de faire éfleurer la littérature à des gens qui n’ont gueres que de l’imagination, & qui l’ont vive’ (Preface).
The work is divided into two parts: the first, which takes up the larger part of the work, is ‘Essais historiques & philosophiques sur le Goût’. The second part is wider-ranging and includes shorter essays, such as ‘Le Goût est-il arbitraire?’, ‘Des fondemens de l’harmonie’, ‘En quoi consiste le géométrique de l’harmonie’ and ‘L’ignorance est-elle plus avantageuse à la politique des princes, que l’étude des lettres?’.

A good copy of the first edition of Thomas' popular and wide-ranging study of women. He gives the history of concubines, the heroines of Sparta, Athenian prostitutes and famous women of the modern era. He examines the influence on women of Christianity and chivalry and compares the different abilities of women and men. Even though in general women he deems women not to be very talented or capable of serious study, nonetheless he does endow them with some qualities. Translated into English as An Essay on the Character, Manners and Genius of Women in different Ages, London 1773, by a Mr. Russell. Another English translation, by Mrs. Kindersley, followed in 1781. More recently, a scholarly edition has been published under the title Qu’est-ce qu’une femme?, Paris, 1989, with commentaries by Diderot and Madame d’Épinay and a preface by Élisabeth Badinter.

Bound after Thomas’ famous essay are three scarce pamphlets:
1. BOUFFLERS, Stanislas-Jean de (1738-1815).
Lettres de M. le Chevalier de Boufflers, pendant son voyage en Suisse, à Madame sa Mère. En Suisse, 1772.
Second edition of this scarce pamphlet first published in 1771. OCLC lists BN, Geneva, Cornell (and BN only of the 1771 edition).
2. VOLTAIRE
Lettre de M. de V... Sur un écrit anonyme. [s.l. probably Paris or Lyon], 1772.
A scarce edition of Voltaire’s reply to an anonymous pamphlet entitled Réflexions sur la jalousie, pour servir de commentaire aux derniers ouvrages de M. de Voltaire, Amsterdam 1772. The author of the pamphlet has been identified as Charles Georges Leroy. The first edition of Voltaire’s riposte was published ‘à Ferney 20 avril 1772’. With one or two small differences, the text of this edition matches that published in the Mercure in June 1772.
OCLC lists BN, Institut et Musée Voltaire, Toronto and Yale.
BN Voltaire Catalogue 4283; not in Bengesco.
3. VOLTAIRE
La Bégueule. Conte Moral. [Paris], 1772.
First Edition of Voltaire’s satirical verse conte in which his heroine, bored by her life of luxury, takes a lover to add spice to her life. Famously, this tale contains the first appearance of Voltaire’s phrase ‘le mieux est l’ennemi du bien’.
OCLC lists BL, Institut et Musée Voltaire, NYPL, Yale, Cambridge, Wake Forest and National Library of Australia.
BN Voltaire Catalogue 2082; Bengesco 653.

A charming copy of one of the most important pastoral novels in French literature, including Florian's introductory essay on the pastoral form. Inspired by Daphnis and Chloe and set at the end of the fifteenth century, the novel tells of the love of the shepherd Némorin for the beautiful Estelle. She returns his love but out of duty and gratitude is obliged to marry another shepherd, Méril, after he rescues her father. Némorin despairs but is saved by Méril's heroic sacrifice of his own life in battle, a sacrifice made so that the lovers might be united. Estelle is thought to be a rather magnificent heroine, of whom the elderly Buffon remarked: 'la douce, l'aimable, l'intéressante Estelle a suspendu mes maux'.
'Dans les pastorales comme dans les arlequinades de Florian, toujours le ciel est bleu, l'amour loyal, les femmes chastes; la vertu, qui est spontanée et facile, est infailliblement récompensée. Mais l'auteur n'est pas dupe. Mainteneur fidèle de la tradition arcadienne et utopique immanente à tout le classicisme, il propose au lecteur un pèlerinage aux siècles d'or, un retour anticipé au paradis perdu. Et il est permis de rester sensible encore à la fluidité mélodique de sa prose et de ses vers' (DLF 487).
Set in the Cévennes, the author's birthplace, this work is also celebrated for its description of the local topography, the mountains, landscapes and flora of the region. 'Je veux célébrer ma patrie', he wrote of Estelle, 'ces beaux climats ou la verte olive, la mure vermeille, la grappe dorée croissent ensemble sous un ciel toujours d'azur'. To augment the local feeling of the work, Florian gives the Provencal translation for a number of the shepherdess' rhymes in the footnotes. The importance of Florian's works to the local community was witnessed in the early twentieth century by the Felibrige revival movement in Provence, which paid an annual tribute to him.
An enormously popular novel, several editions were published within the first year, at least five bearing the present imprint ('de l'imprimerie de Monsieur', ie the brother of Louis XVI who reigned from 1815 as Louis XVIII). Cioranescu gives the present edition as the first, but MMF demote it to third place.

An attractive copy of the first edition of this popular novel. Having lost her first husband to the scaffold in 1793, the comtesse de Flahaut fled France with her young son and escaped across Germany to England. On her trying to return to France some years later, she met M. de Souza at one of the barricades and married him. The two then returned to Paris where she was welcomed for her pure spirit, the delicacy of her judgements and the charm of her conversation. She wrote a number of animated and agreeable novels, the most famous of which is Adele de Senage, which established her reputation, although many critics have preferred Eugene de Rothelin. It is a novel which paints aristocratic society as it was before the revolution, seen without its faults and presented as a thing of grace, amiability and distinction.

'Aperçus très-fins sur la société; tableaux vrais et bien terminés; style orné avec mesure... l'esprit qui ne dit rien de vulgaire et le goût qui ne dit rien de trop' (Mme de P, NBG).

A delightful devotional work produced for the Marian confraternity at Salzburg University, the Congregation of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Arranged to provide devotional guidance throughout the year, the first part of the work contains a hagiography of a dozen saints, arranged according to their feast days, with one chosen for each month of the year. Engraved on the recto of these leaves is a narrative portrait of the saint set within an oval cartouche surrounded by scenes from his or her life, labelled with the saint’s name and accompanied in some cases with small bits of text for extra clarification. On the verso of each of these leaves is a short biography of the featured saint.
Several editions of this work exist for different congregations and while the text is similar, the saints tend to vary. In this edition, where the roll of saints include some lesser known ones, the 12 featured saints are St. Aldegundis, SS. Germanus & Randoaldus, St. Aldemarius, St. Wicterpus, SS. Paul, St. Bardo, St. Tatwinus, St. Canoaldus, St. Edith, St. Desiderius, St. Portianus and St. Jodocus. Set out according to the calendar year rather than the liturgical year, the work is described on the title as a ‘strena’ or ‘New Year’s gift’. Similar works also appeared under different titles, such as Orationes Partheniae and Officia sodalis Mariani, but with the same basic content. Given how many are likely to have been produced, it is surprising that individual editions such as the present have survived in such small numbers.
Following the main text is a table of contents and various lists of the members of the confraternity. These begin with the most senior appointments but also include a list of all new student members who have joined in 1766 and 1767, listed according to their discipline. The final list gives the names of all those community members deceased from 1764 to 1767.

A delightfully printed selection of fables glorying in a profusion of typographical decoration from the Quillau press, at this point run by Quillau’s widow. This scarce first appearance of Delacour Damonville’s work consists entirely of poems in the form of quatrains. It contains 150 fables, followed by 50 Maxims, a final Epilogue, Envoi and Réponse and a concluding quatrain ‘Au Critique’. The work is preface by a dedication, to a ‘M***’, also in the form of a quatrain, and quatrains addressed to the Reader, to Critics and to Children. Two final introductory poems (quatrains, of course) provide a portrait of Aesop and the ‘Dessein de la Fable’. The charm and wonder of this work is two fold: in the simplicity of form, adhered to throughout, and in the luxuriance of typographical ornament abounding on every page.
This appears to have been Delacour Damonville’s only work: it is the only entry in Cioranescu and we have been unable to discover anything else about the author. A new edition by Joseph Barbou was published in 1756 with the subtitle ‘à l’usage des enfans’, which would tie in with the dedicatory verse ‘Aux Enfants’ included among the preliminary quatrains. A further edition appeared in 1761 and was accompanied by plates, though it would be hard to beat the simple charm of the presentation of this first edition.

The scarce first appearance in French of selected letters by the Princess Palatine, known variously as ‘Madame’, ‘Duchesse d’Orléans’, ‘Liselotte von der Pfalz’ and through her many royal descendants known as ‘the grandmother of Europe’. The second wife of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, Louis XIV’s younger brother, she holds a firm place in literary history through her extensive correspondence which paints an unadorned and unfiltered portrait of the French court, its politics and sexual intrigues. In all, she is thought to have written some 60,000 letters, putting her considerably ahead of Madame de Sevigné for sheer volume. Written originally in German and translated here by Joseph de Maimeux (1753-1820), it remains one of the best-known German language texts of the Baroque. Often compared to Saint Simon, another prolific witness of the court of the sun king, Saint-Beuve wrote of her correspondence as ‘précieux et incomporable témoin de moeurs’, speaking of the importance and originality of her voice: ‘il manquerait à cette Cour une figure et une parole des plus originales, si ell n’y était pas’.
The present copy, which is uncut in the original blue wrappers with manuscript spine label, has a loosely inserted manuscript booklet of six pages, ‘Extraits de Lettres Originales, en Allemand, de Madame Charlotte-Elisabeth d’Orléans, veuve de Philippe d’Orléans, écrites au Duc Antoine-Ulric de Brunswick-Wolffenbutel, et à la Princesse de Galles, Caroline, née Princesse d’Anspach. Les originales sont dans les archives de x.x.-x.x.x. Brunsvic’, which contains a fair copy of extracts from other letters not included.

Saint Simon’s celebrated Mémoires, ‘one of the most original monuments of French literature’, were principally written between 1740 and 1746 long after he went into retirement. The sparkling wit and complete freedom from restraint of the memoirs - Saint Simon allows his personal hatreds free reign and writes violently against the ‘leprosy’ of equality - make them an enjoyable read as well as being an important, if not altogether impartial, source of information.

The first two volumes contain a number of extracts from Saint-Simon’s Mémoires, which were not to be published for another couple of years. A fourth volume dealing with the reigns of Henri IV and Louis XIII was added later.

‘Tout dans cette Galerie n’est pas tiré de Saint-Simon; il est vraisemblable que Soulavie a été l’éditeur de ce recueil’ (Tchemerzine, V, p. 657).

An important Renaissance treatise on cosmetics, hygiene and feminine beauty, first published in 1562. Written by the celebrated physician and natural philosopher Giovanni Marinelli, whose daughter, Lucrezia Marinella, wrote the radical La Nobilita et l’eccellenza delle donne, codifetti et mancamenti de gli uomini, (’The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men’, not exactly pulling her punches), published in 1600. Himself an advocate of women’s education, Marinello’s work, which is dedicated to all ‘chaste and young women’, is remarkable for its celebration of female beauty and for encouraging women directly - the choice of publishing in the vernacular was no accident - to take an active part in their own health and beauty.
Marinelli includes remedies for a number of physical ailments and advice for good personal hygiene and tips on dieting both for losing and gaining weight. A large part of the work is devoted to beauty, with recipes for perfumes, advice on body symmetry, treatments for the eyes, lips and neck, with recipes for preparing bath salts and lotions. An astonishing 26 recipes for hair dye is testament to the popularity among Italian women of the time for dying their hair blond.
‘[Marinelli’s] views on women were bold; indeed, they were feminist... As Letizia Panizza has pointed out, this handbook of advice of women’s health and beauty presents a striking departure from the contemporary tendency to stigmatize women’s concern with their physical appearance as vanity. Making an explicit point of his feminism, however, Marinelli also prefaced his text with a brief defence of women, which rehearsed the prominent features of the ‘querelle des femmes’ and underscored his status as a humanist contributing to this pervasive literary debate’ (Ross, Sarah, The Birth of Feminism, 2009, p. 198).

A scarce translation of this German sentimental novel set in wartime, attributed to the German writer Adam Beuvius. Originally published as Henriette oder der Husarenraub, in Briefen bey Gelegenheit des gegenwärtigen Krieges, Berlin and Leipzig, 1779. It has also been attributed to Christopher Martin Wieland (1733-1813). An English translation of the first volume appeared in Dublin in 1786, with the attribution to Wieland on the title page: Henrietta of Gerstenfeld. Translated from the German of Mr. Wieland, Dublin, H. Chamberlain for the Translator, 1786. The Wieland attribution was dropped when the second volume, which was printed by William Lane at the Minerva Press, followed in 1788: Henrietta of Gerstenfeld; a German Story.
Andrew Becket evidently expected something more from a German novel: ‘on the score of morality it is truly excellent. -But it is greatly wanting in those delicate and pathetic touches, which so particularly distinguish the writings of a Gesner, and a Klopstock...’ (Monthly Review, quoted in GRS, I, 377).

A delightful copy of Sept-Chênes’ translation of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, from the Starhemberg Library, in fresh condition in a typically Starhemberg binding. The translator, Leclerc de Sept-Chênes, was tutor to the young Louis XVI and the first volume was partly translated by the young king as an exercise in learning English. Sept-Chênes made corrections to the work of his Royal charge and completed the translation, which was first published in three volumes in 1776. Various other translators tackled the remaining volumes of Gibbon’s work and it was finally published by Moutard in its entirety in 18 volumes, 1788-1795.
‘Louis XVI, étudiant l’anglais sous la direction de Leclerc de Sept-Chênes, lecteur de son cabinet, s’est exercé sur le premier volume, publié en 1776, et, arrivé aux 15ème et 16ème chapitres, il abandonna l’ouvrage que revit, continua et fit imprimer M. de Sept-Chênes’ (Brunet).

First edition of one of Riccoboni’s scarcer early novels. Written in the third person, as against the epistolary form that came to be her preferred genre (although some ten letters are given in the body of the text and those mostly in the first half), Histoire de M. le Marquis de Cressy is an analytical sentimental novel in which the egotistical and ambitious Cressy seeks, Valmont-like, to forward his career and his fortune through a series of well-placed seductions. Riccoboni’s interest, as always, lies in the collateral damage done to the female characters through their involvement with the hero and it is in the subtlety and astuteness of Riccoboni’s psychological analysis that the strength of the novel lies.
‘The best [of Riccoboni’s novels] is her Histoire de M. le marquis de Cressy (1758), in which the conflict of motive happens to be in the mind of a man. The middle-aged marquis has engaged the affections of a young girl, and for a moment hesitates between the charm of her youth and the worldly advantages of marriage with a beautiful widow who will second his ambitions. He writes one of those sophistical letters in which Madame Riccoboni excelled, explaining to the unfortunate girl that although his heart burns for her he must sacrifice his dreams of happiness. She feels that life for her is over, and takes the veil, bidding her perfidious lover adieu. She loves him yet, though she knows now that she has loved an illusion: it is not the lover that is most regretted, but the sentiment, the enchantment that has flown, the bliss of loving. That is the consolation of the sentimentalist’ (Ernest Albert Baker, The History of the English Novel, v.1 p. 137).
This was a very popular novel, with several other editions of the French text following in 1758 and subsequent years. An English translation was published in 1765 under the title The History of the Marquis of Cressy. Translated from the French (Block p. 197).

A handsome copy of this important early utopia set in Australia, said to be the most complex and accomplished of all fictional utopias. Denis de Vairasse was a French Huguenot living in London which explains why the first part of the work saw publication in an English translation by A. Roberts, The history of the Sevarites or Sevarambi: a nation inhabiting part of the third continent, commonly called, Terræ australes incognitæ, London, 1675, prior to its first appearance in French. This followed some two years later, when a rather spicier second part was added (for the French market) and it was published in four volumes by Barbin in Paris, 1677-1679. All early editions are scarce.
‘Denis Veiras, ou Vairasse, obscur soldat et avocat sans causes qui s’autoproclame, sous l’anagramme de Sévarias, législateur génial et fondateur d’utopie. L’Histoire des Sévarambes et la plus achevée des utopies romanesques. C’est le paradigme de “l’utopie narrative”, selon l’expression de Jean-Michel Racaut, dans un habile équilibre entre la statistique fictive et le voyage imaginaire. Des cinq parties de l’ouvrage, la première raconte une aventure maritime avec naufrage dans les terres australes et robinsonnade, la seconde l’habituel épisode du tourisme utopique et l’installation de Siden (anagramme de Denis) et de ses compagnons chez les Sévarambes pour une quinzaine d’années; les trois dernières sont consacrées à l’histoire et aux moeurs des Sévarambes’ (Utopie, la quête de la société idéale en Occident, p. 179).

A delightful copy of this scarce French translation of Philip Falle’s historical account of the Channel Islands, translated by Le Rouge, who also supplied the folding map of the islands and commends the map by Dumaresq as ‘sans contredit la meilleur jusqu’à présent’. Born on Jersey, Falle’s An Account of the Isle of Jersey, the Greatest of those Islands that are now the only Remainder of the English Dominions in France, London, John Newton, 1694, was the printed first account of the island. Falle also supplied the description of the Channel Islands for Bishop Gibson's 1722 translation of Camden's Britannia, and in 1734 he published an enlarged version of his history of Jersey.

A scarce pocket edition of this popular compendium of the lives of the Roman emperors, modelled on Suetonius and said to be the work of the six authors on the title-page. Numerous scholalarly editions have been published over the centuries but the original authorship remains an enigma. The present edition is an amalgamated text combining Isaac Casaubon’s original edition of 1603 with notes by Janus Gruterus and Claude de Saumaise.

A nice copy in a contemporary vellum binding of this Greek and Latin parallel text edition of Homer’s Odyssey. This edition is based, with revisions, on earlier editions by Henri Estienne, among others. It concludes with a section in which important lines from the poem are grouped together by subject matter.

A scarce and elegantly printed collection of sonnets on the subject of a debt of the sum of three giuli. Giovanni Battista Casti was the author of a number of opera libretti, some of which, such as his most famous, Cublai, gran Kan de’ tartari, 1788, were set by Salieri. Casti dedicates the work to Cecilia Mahony Giustiniani (1740-1789), who was a Naples-born protegée of James III and who was painted by Pompeo Batoni in 1785.

Provenance: Edward H. Bunbury (1811-1885), fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, best known for his work on the study of geography among the ancients.

A handsome copy of this very attractive first French translation of Gessner's Idylles, beautifully illustrated throughout. The frontispiece, depicting a shepherdess in a pastoral scene, is engraved by Claude-Henri Watelet (1718-1786) after Etienne de La Vallée-Poussin (1735-1802) and there are twelve further engravings in the course of the text, as head- and tail-pieces. Eleven of these are also engraved by Watelet after Lavallée-Poussin and Pierre and the twelfth is by Watelet’s long-term lover, Marguerite Lecomte (1717-1800). Each of the pieces is signed.
This is an early work by Huber, only preceded by another translation from Gessner, his La mort d'Abel, 1760. Huber, the first to introduce Gessner into France, was to go on to be a prolific writer and translator, always from the German, specialising mainly in poetry and in the history of art, particularly antiquities. He also published a work of instruction in the German language and in 1766 took up a post teaching French at the University of Leipzig. Turgot was among Huber’s students and it was he who supplied the preface to the present work as well as the translation of the first idyll. Huber’s translator’s preface is also of considerable interest for its discussion of contemporary German literature, arguing its superiority over Italian and English literature, analysing the works of several authors and citing numerous passages of particular value to the man of taste.