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A handsome copy of the first part, containing the first three books, of one of the most popular picaresque novels of the French eighteenth century. Although it is stated on p. 378, ‘Fin du troisième & dernier Livre’, a second volume appeared two years later, containing books four to six (La Haye, Pierre Gosse, 1738).
Although not in quite the same league as his Gil Blas, Le Sage's Bachelier de Salamanque shares many of the same features, from the successful formula of the hero's many adventures loosely bound together to the enduringly popular Spanish theme common to many of Le Sage's novels. There were numerous editions throughout the century and beyond.
'He was a writer for his time, an artisan of letters, and a supporter of the modernes in the Quérelle. He wrote for a broad public, and Gil Blas in particular was much appreciated by readers of many countries for two centuries. Critics have sometimes viewed him rather more patronisingly, condemning the diffuse nature of his narratives and the banality or superficiality of his morality and his psychology. Yet he is in many ways a fascinating witness of his period. His writing is sharp and up to date, he has a gift for the dramatic scene and a keen eye for the masks and pretences of a corrupt society. While reusing old literary material, he nevertheless gives us a strong sense of life in a real, unidealized world' (Peter France in the New Oxford Companion to Literature in French).

A scarce novel telling of the adventures of an impressionable young man who, on the death of his father, comes to Paris to seek his fortune and enlist in the army. His mind full of romances and fairy tales, he immediately falls in love with his aunt by marriage, who is the only person in Paris to offer him any help and who, miraculously, falls for him with an equally fiery passion. The rest of the novel recounts his various adventures in the army and in fashionable Paris society. Olimpe, the aunt, pops in and out of the narrative throughout, but so do numerous other sirens, most notably cousin Emilie. This is the first work by the marquis du Terrail, lieutenant general of Verdun. He wrote one other novel, La Princesse de Gonsague, 1756, and a tragedie called Lagus, roi d'Egypte, 1754, as well as publishing his plans for the erection of statues of Louis XIV, entitled Projet relatif à la noblesse, au militaire et à l'établissement de deux places pour les statues équestre et pédestre de S. M. Louis XIV, 1750.

A handsome copy of this scarce materialist diatribe in three parts by three different authors. The first part, Le Monde, son Origine et son Antiquité is by Jean-Frédéric Bernard, an exiled French Protestant who set up as an editor and bookseller in the Netherlands, where he published a number of books on different subjects. The second part, which has its own separate title page, is in two sections, firstly De L’Ame, et de son Immortalité, also dated Londres, 1751, which is by Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud. Concluding the volume is Essai sur la Chronologie by Jean-Baptiste Le Mascrier, which has its own register and drop-head title.
‘L’entreprise de Mirabaud parait d’une cohérence exemplaire, par sa méthode et par la fin systématique qu’elle poursuit. Elle résume un aspect essentiel de la pensée matérialiste du début du XVIIIème siècle’ (Olivier Bloch, Le Matérialisme du XVIIIème siècle et la littérature clandestine, p. 98).

A very attractive copy of a popular jestbook, first published in 1700. This new edition is advertised as being ‘augmentée de plus de double’, including a new previously unpublished part, new ‘vives gasconnades’ and several new ‘histoires galantes’, all accompanied by refexions. Apart from the mass of popular jokes, tales and so forth, gathered from street-parlance and everyday life and with no known origin, the authors and historical figures who unwittingly contributed their witty sayings to the present compilation include Thomas More, Bacon, Dante, Furetiere, Machiavelli, Rabelais, ‘le capitaine Miller’, ‘George’ and Socrates.
This work is also attributed to Cartier de Saint Philip, author of Le Je ne Sais Quoi, ou mélanges curieux, 1724, though it is not listed in his works by Cioranescu.

A scarce collection of works on the theme of love put together by Jean Baptiste de Saincric who was inspired to do so because of the rarity of the original publications. A Bordeaux doctor who specialised in medical hygiene and forensics, Saincric wrote widely on the medical topography of Bordeaux and its surroundings. He was a member of the Académie de Bordeaux and was twice president of the Société de Médecine de Bordeaux in 1824 and 1837. Dedicated to ‘Sophie’, this work is a book of parts, with ‘Avis de l’Editeur’, ‘Suite de la note du libraire’ and ‘Introduction’ by way of prefatory material, then the title work, ‘Le Sacrifice de l’Amour, ou la Messe de Cythere’ (pp. 17-48) and ‘Sermon prêché a Gnide, a la Cérémonie du Mai, par le berger Sylvain’ (pp. 49-63). The major part of the volume is the dictionary of amorous terms, which is taken largely from Marechal’s Dictionnaire d’Amour, 1788, with additional material from the earlier Dictionnaire de l’Amour, dans lequel on trouvera l’explication des termes les plus usité dans cette langue, 1741 by Jean-François Dreux du Radier. An index follows the dictionary.

‘The Little Dictionary of Love has become very rare; you can only find it in very few libraries. It therefore seemed urgent to offer a new edition of it, corrected and augmented. In taking on this work, we believe we are performing an essential service to the fervent lovers of Venus and of his dear son. We have not, moreover, omitted anything which might make this new Dictionary worthy of public favour. It collects together the most striking articles by berger Sylvain with a work which was published anonymously at the Hague in 1741; and we have improved it with a host of pleasant pieces, taken from the best writers’.

The second edition, following the very scarce Le Sopha couleur de roze, 1120 de l’Hégire, a Gaznah, also published in 1742. Neither Jones nor Tchemerzine had seen a copy of this earlier edition (Jones just lists the present edition as the first) but it does exist: OCLC lists copies at Cambridge, V&A, Penn, McGill and Texas.
Le Sopha is Crébillon fils’ most brilliant novel. It was enormously popular in its time, with its humour, its mild eroticism and its fashionable eastern setting, and is still entertaining today. Dozens of editions have been published from the eigtheenth century to the present. The central character was thought to have been based on Louis XV, a suspicion which was enough to enable Madame de Pompadour to have Crébillon exiled for five years. Laclos further immortalised the work by making it the favourite reading for Madame de Merteuil in his Les Liaisons dangereuses.
‘Crébillon déteste et méprise l’étroite société qu’il décrite, ses hauts personnages hypocrites, corrompus, égoïstes, méchants, inutiles, médisants, fats et quelquefois sots, il fait même passer l’expression satirique de sa haine avant l’intérêt romanesque... A part deux chapitres du Sopha qui évoquent avec lyrisme le franc et vrai plaisir d’aimer, tout le reste de l’oeuvre est pessimiste et grimaçant... à la galerie des imposteurs et des vicieux s’oppose une galerie de libertins lucides, mais aussi antipathiques, et dont aucun n’est vraiment heureux’ (Henri Coulet, Le Roman au XVIII Siècle, pp. 365-366). We can be thankful for those two chapters, which are chapter seven and the final chapter.

The very rare first edition of one of the most popular humorous books of the French eighteenth century which saw at least half a dozen reprints in the eighteenth century and was reprinted by Pierre-Charles Monselet in 1881. The introductory material - introduction, épitre dédicatoire, envoi and avant-propos - describe with gusto the final stages of the work's production. Reading aloud to himself the final phrases of his work, an abbot, looking like a four-foot doll, smiles at the charm of his own work and at how popular it will be with the ladies. He preens himself happily before visiting a young countess to whom he begs leave to dedicate the work.
The work itself is a series of tales and anecdotes, romantic stories interwoven with satirical comment and brief comic interludes, very much like a modern day comedy show with improvisations and narrative serials. The titles of the various chapters give some idea as to the satirical, lively and mildly libertine nature of the work: 'le Labyrinthe', 'le faux Milord', 'le Malade Imaginaire', 'l'Actrice de Province raconte son Histoire', 'Des Boudoirs consacrés à la Volupté' and 'Des Boudoirs consacrés à l'Intérêt'.
'Cet ouvrage moral est le récit d'une partie fine, où chacun raconte son histoire. Les personnages s'appellent Persac, Sainval, le Président, la Bouquetière, la Marchande, la Danseuse, etc. C'est très gai', says Gay, adding, that Cailhava had so much success with the work that he almost immediately reissued it under the title Le Soupé, conte moral.

A very attractive little almanac and a scarce one. As well as the calendar and numerous tables, this little compendium provides lists of the public and private libraries of Paris, giving their dates of foundation and founders’ names as well as detailing the number of books held by each library and specifying the addresses and opening hours. The almanac is illustrated with a number of attractive vignettes, including, as well as the standard pastoral genre, several rather more unusual scenes, such as the pipe-smoking cherub who is also a merchant (in the section ‘marine et commerce). In the section devoted to ‘l’Imprimerie’, there is a vignette of two cherubs working the press.

A scarce biography of the capucin friar Joseph Le Clerc du Tremblay (1577-1638) Richelieu’s intimate friend and advisor. Known as l’eminence grise, a nickname that has come to signify individuals excercising hidden political power, le Père Joseph was immortalised in English literature by Aldous Huxley in his Grey Eminence.
René Richard’s biography was first published under the title Histoire de la Vie du P. Joseph Le Clerc du Tremblay, capucin, in 1702 and republished anonymously here as Le Veritable Père Joseph. Curiously, Richard published a Réponse au livre intitulé Père Joseph, also in 1704, being a criticism of the present ‘anonymous’ work. It was appended to another 1704 printing of the original text under yet another title, Vie du P. Joseph Le Clerc du Tremblay, Geneva 1704. This is a scarce provincial printing from the Savoie region in the Auvergne in southern France.

A delightful production by Bodoni, with the text printed within lovely typographical borders throughout and bound in thick block-stamped paper boards. It is a collection of texts by Antonio Cerati, a member of the Accademia dell’Arcadia. The first and best of the two works is a poetic celebration of the villas belonging to the Marchese Francesco Buonvisi in Lucca, where he had resided for some time to recover from an illness - an interesting example of eighteenth century Italian topographical poetry. The second part, which is addressed to specific dedicatees, moves from love poetry to political commentary.
The second work, printed by Filippo Carmignani in Parma, is a poem celebrating the promotion of Cerati’s brother to the bishopric of Piacenza.

An extraordinary philosophical voyage in the form of a dream sequence to the land of the Sélénites on the moon. The voyage is made by means of one of the earliest fictional aeronautical devices, a complex interplanetary flying machine which takes passengers across the hyperboric region 'à force d'x et d'y' and is flown by a specialist pilot, 'intrépide calculateur de l'infini'. In addition to their flying machines, the Sélénites have a technologically advanced society, with running water in all the houses and air conditioning in the hospitals. There is no concept of ownership, of 'mien' and 'tien', and so there is no crime. In the education of children Villeneuve has a particularly radical outlook, with all the children brought up to be ambidextrous and both sexes educated to the same extent. The Sélénites have also managed to preserve some works that have been lost on earth, including Cicero's Republic and considerable fragments from the library of Alexandria.
Hartig criticises some of Villeneuve's fictional devices as being unoriginal, such as the hero's transportation from Rome to Paris in 48 minutes, or to Japan in 16 or 17 hours, achieved by the author's being suspended in air while the earth rotates. This apparently was an idea first advanced by Fontenelle in 1686 and subsequently refuted. For all that, it is a nice conceit and, scientific accuracy apart, it makes for good fantasy. Hartig further condemns the work for its second volume, which contains only philosophical digressions, 'd'intérêt médiocre'. But Versins devotes a considerable amount of time to the work, which he hails as 'très étonnant' in many aspects, in being pre-Mercier as a utopia set in future time and in being pre-Tiphaigne de la Roche in its communications theories and in its ground-breaking introduction of the astronaut. Hartig adds that the work was severely criticised in the Journal encyclopédique, 1761. Albert Soboul, in his Utopies aux Siècle des Lumières, calls this work 'the perfect realization of the age of enlightenment' (see Lewis, p. 195).

A fascinating educational work on logic written in French by the Italian nobleman Fortunato de Felice, philosopher, scientist, leading publisher (he founded the Typographic Society of Bern as well as the press at Yverdon) and pioneer of education in Switzerland. A prolific writer on many subjects, he is chiefly remembered for the Encyclopédie d’Yverdon, which grew out of the educational establishment for young people that he had founded in 1762 at the same time as the printing press. As well as editing the encyclopaedia, he contributed more than 800 articles to it on a wide variety of philosophical, theological and scientific subjects. He wrote a number of educational works of considerable importance and also translated numerous authors including Descartes, d’Alembert, Newton and Maupertuis into Italian as well as works by Burlamaqui, Albrecht von Haller, Winckleman and many others into French.
Fortunato de Felice’s Leçons de Logique, which are suitably arranged into a logical array of parts, chapters and sub-divisions, present a kind of manual of rational thought: in its 28 clearly-presented lessons, it has been much praised as one of the best examples of this genre in French. ‘Il est assez singulier que nous soyons redevables à un étranger de la meilleure logique que nous ayons en françois’ (Elie Fréron, cited in Perret, Les Imprimeries d’Yverdon aux XVII et XVIIIe siècle, p. 188).
This work was printed at Fortunato de Felice’s own press in Yverdon in the same year that the first two volumes of his 48 volume Encyclopédie d’Yverdon were published.

Edmond and Jules de Goncourt’s copy of this popular French song book, elegantly printed with fabulous illustrations by Moreau. Pierre Laujon was a celebrated society host, who organised soirées and entertainments for a select few, at which his songs and ballads would be performed. His ballets, operas and verse were moderately popular and, eventually, at the advanced age of eighty, gained him his place in the Académie française. This collection contains the melodies and lyrics to 264 songs and ballads. Mostly written in a lively and humorous style, the songs celebrate love and drunkenness, birth and marriage, the follies of old age and the daily social whirl and pastimes of the ancien régime. Moreau’s illustrations are particularly evocative of Laujon’s world of aristocratic entertainment, as shown in the vignette in the second volume which depicts a magic lantern show and its enraptured audience.
This is a stunning copy from the library of the brothers Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896) and Jules de Goncourt (1830-1870), bibliophiles, literary partners, models of bon goût and novelists, mostly remembered today for the Prix Goncourt which is probably the most important literary prize in French literature. The brothers’ passion was the literature, art and culture of the eighteenth century and their many collaborative works were based on meticulous collections of books, engravings and documents of the era. One of their principal enthusiasms was the work of Jean-Michel Moreau whose life and works the brothers wrote about extensively (including Les vignettistes, Eisen, Moreau, Paris, Dentu, 1870; L’art du dix-huitième siècle, Paris, 1880-1882).
Altogether the three volumes include three elegant engraved title-pages by Moreau (that of the first volume is used again in the second, with only the volume number changed), a frontispiece by Moreau, engraved by Launay, Simonet and Martini and three engraved head-pieces by Moreau, engraved by Duclos and Martini and three tail-pieces by Moreau, engraved by de Launay (vols 1 & 2) and by Moreau himself (vol. 3). The text itself is elegantly printed with abundant decoration, typographical ornaments and small vignettes. The third volume, which is usually found with the first two, has the title ‘Les A Propos de la Folie, ou Chancons Grotesques, Grivoises et Annonces de Parade’.

‘Les illustrations sont d’une grâce ravissante et comptent parmi les meilleures de Moreau’ (Cohen-de Ricci coll. 604).

Provenance: Jules and Edmond de Goncourt, with their bookplate, and the manuscript note ‘Une des plus delicates illustrations de Moreau’, signed ‘de Goncourt’.

An attractive copy of this early edition of Diderot's controversial novel, listed second by David Adams and given as the second edition by Tchemerzine. The plates all correspond to Adams BI2 except for the first plate in the second volume which has been bound at p. 265 and is marked as such. All the plates have the word ‘Les Bijoux’ underneath the picture and the volume and page numbers marked at the top. The frontispiece, which is the same as Adams’ BI1, is marked ‘tom. I’ and ‘Frontispiece des Bijoux’. The final leaf as called for by Adams, ‘Avis au Relieur pour placer les Figures’ has been discarded.
Three editions of Diderot’s Bijoux were published in 1748, all with the same title and imprint but with varying illustrations, this edition with the shorter pagination than the other two. This is Diderot’s first novel, written to raise funds to pay for the expensive lifestyle of his mistress, Madame de Puisieux. Based on the medieval tale 'Le chevalier que faisait les cons parler' and heavily influenced by Caylus' adaptation of this and Crebillon fils' contes libertins, Diderot soon came to disavow his earliest and raciest work. It caused an enormous scandal on its publication and, along with his Lettres sur les aveugles, was the cause of Diderot's being imprisoned in Vincennes. This is Diderot's nearest approach to the world of Thérèse Philosophe (on the publication of Bijoux Indiscrets this was frequently attributed to him), 'the bawdy, naughty, cheeky world of the early Enlightenment, where everything was held up to question and nothing was sacred' (Darnton p. 90).
Even in this, his most scandalous and light-hearted work, Diderot was beginning to express the philosophical ideas that came to fruition in his later work. 'La critique du cartésianisme, des systèmes à priori, des rêveries de la métaphysique, l'apologie de Newton, certaines théories empiristes et associationnistes, les professions de foi de naturalisme moral montrent que, même dans un ouvrage très léger... Diderot n'oublie pas la philosophie' (H. Bénac, quoted by Henri Berthaut in Grente's Dictionnaire des Lettres Françaises).

The first edition of Diderot's first novel, in a modern green vellum binding. Diderot’s early best-seller was said to have been written to pay for the expensive lifestyle of his mistress, Madame de Puisieux. Based on the medieval tale 'Le chevalier que faisait les cons parler' and heavily influenced by Caylus' adaptation of this and Crebillon fils' contes libertins, Diderot soon came to disavow his earliest and raciest work. It caused an enormous scandal on its publication and, along with his Lettres sur les aveugles, was the cause of Diderot's being imprisoned in Vincennes. This is Diderot's nearest approach to the world of Thérèse Philosophe (on the publication of Bijoux Indiscrets this was frequently attributed to him), 'the bawdy, naughty, cheeky world of the early Enlightenment, where everything was held up to question and nothing was sacred' (Darnton p. 90).
Even in this, his most scandalous and light-hearted work, Diderot was beginning to express the philosophical ideas that came to fruition in his later work. 'La critique du cartésianisme, des systèmes à priori, des rêveries de la métaphysique, l'apologie de Newton, certaines théories empiristes et associationnistes, les professions de foi de naturalisme moral montrent que, même dans un ouvrage très léger... Diderot n'oublie pas la philosophie' (H. Bénac, quoted by Henri Berthaut in Grente's Dictionnaire des Lettres Françaises).

A handsome set, in an English binding, of Rousseau’s Confessions, with a contemporary English female provenance. This is a mixed set, comprising the first edition of Volumes III and IV (conforming to Bernard Gagnebin and Lucien Scheler in Tchemerzine V, 563) and a reprint of Volumes I and II, with the same imprint, ‘A Genève, 1782’. It also has the supplementary fifth volume, Seconde Partie des Confessions de J.J. Rousseau. Suivie d’un nouveau choix de Lettres de l’Auteur, Geneve 1789 (OCLC lists the Vassar Collection only).
The bindings on the first two volumes, published in 1782, are slightly different to those of the final three volumes, but each of them bears the ownership inscription of Elizabeth Bateman. In the first volume she has added ‘2 vols’ and so presumably she purchased them prior to the continuations, which were published some seven years later, and had them bound. In turn, she must have had the continuation volumes bound to match the first two, but perhaps by a different binder: the red labels and the green circular numbering pieces are uniform, but the actual tools used for the binding were different. This is a lovely example of literature on the go and shows how serial publications actually worked. That this is also an import, and an import owned by a female collector, rather adds to the resonance of this particular copy.

An excellent set with an illustrious female provenance of this important faux mémoire telling of Paris social life and the sentimental education of the eponymous hero. With a preface addressed to his father, this was one of Crébillon fils’ earliest literary triumphs and was widely read - the Earl of Shaftesbury is known to have read it - and translated into English as The wanderings of the heart and mind, London, 1751. These three volumes represent the scarce first editions, the first volume printed in Paris by Prault and the subsequent two volumes printed in the Hague by Gosse and Neaulme. The work was an overnight best-seller and editions were published frequently for the next half century or so. It was also included in the Bibliothèque du campagne, 1738-42 and in the Bibliothèque universelle des romans, 1786. The first volume is more often found with later editions of the second and third volumes.
‘A text which readers, scholars, and historians have continued to revisit, if not for the early modern circumvoluted beauty of the sentences, then for clues about the tacit system of rules associated with the liaisons of Parisian aristocrats during the Regency and early years of Louis XV’s reign’ (Ganofsky, Marine, The Literary Encyclopedia, 2017).

Provenance: i.) Elisabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain (1692-1766), by marriage to Philip V. Described by her biographer as a ‘termagent’. ii.) Ownership inscription of J.M. Waugh, with the note in his hand: ‘Les Egaremens du Coeur se sont egarés des mains du Roi de l’Espagne entre celles de J.M. Waugh’. iii.) Another hand continues the note, ‘et ensuite entre les mains de J. Redshaw(?)’. iv.) With the bookplate of William Charles Flack in each volume.

A handsome copy in a Bozerian jeune binding of one of the few copies of Caylus’ jeu d’esprit to be printed on large paper. The frontispiece portrait, the ‘blue books’ vignette of the title page, the false imprint and the false edition statement are all part of an elaborate parody of the Bibliothèque bleue printed by Oudot in Troyes. A note on the verso of the frontispiece facetiously explains the inclusion of the portrait in a wonderful sentence rife with double meanings about counterfeit texts: ‘L’Imprimeur étant contrefait, il a jugé à propos de se faire graver, afin que son Livre ne soit pas de lui, quand il n’y sera pas’.
Another dig at the commercial success of the Oudot family is printed on the verso of the title-page, facing the preface: ‘L’attention que je me donne pour satisfaire le gré du Public, ne m’empêche point de penser à mes petits intérêts; c’est la raison pourquoi, pour satisfaire à la curiosité d’aucuns parmi les Curieux, on a tiré queuques [sic] Exemplaires sur de grand & gros papier; ça me coûte fort peu, & ça se vend un tiers de plus, c’est la maniere’.
These humorous works contain a variety of contes galantes, facetious anecdotes, short stories, little fictional vignettes, imaginary correspondence, short plays, poems and dialogues, with settings which take the reader from the fashionable east to the more disreputable parts of Paris. With the famous satirical frontispiece illustrating the printer, ‘Monsieur ou Madame Oudot’, here printed in blue. Also containing ‘Lettre Persanne d’un Monsieur de Paris, à un Gentilhomme Turc de ses Amis’ (pp. 21-28) and the reply ‘Reponse pour le Gentilhomme Turc, à la Lettre Persanne de Paris’ (pp. 28-32); ‘Dialogue en forme de Questions, sur le Mariage’ (pp. 37-45), ‘Le Ballet des Dindons’ (pp. 84-91), ‘Le Prince Bel-Esprit, & la Reine Toute-Belle’ (pp. 96-104) and the conte philosophique ‘Les Epreuves d’Amour dans les quatre Elémens, histoire nouvelle’, with its continuation (pp. 106-175). Written in collaboration with a number of Caylus’ friends, including Crébillon fils, Duclos, Vadé, Maurepas, Moncrif, Collé, Voisenon and the redoubtable bibliophile the Comtesse de Verrue. These were the key players in a literary société badine which centred around the actress and comedian Jeanne-Françoise Quinault. The society would meet for exuberant dinners during the course of which they would these tales and satirical pieces would be composed.

A rather disappointing copy of one of the scarcest of the eleven known oeuvres badines to come out of the ‘Société du Bout-du-Banc’, the literary dining society of the actress Mademoiselle Quinault. Set up in 1741, the society counted among its members Madame de Graffigny, Moncrif, Duclos, Crébillon fils, Madame du Châtelet, Marivaux, Maurepas and Voisenon. Towering above them all and dominating the society’s legendary dinners and organic compositions was the multi-talented figure of ‘Blaise’, or the Comte de Caylus. The most well-known of the group’s publications are Les Etrennes de la Saint-Jean, Les Ecosseuses ou les Œufs de Pâques (often published together) and Recueil de ces Messieurs but they were also responsible for the collaborative authorship of Le Loup Galleux, Histoire de Guilleaume, Quelques aventures curieuses et galantes des bals de bois, Cinq contes de fées, Les Manteaux, Mémoires de l’Académie des colporteurs and (probably) Le Pot-pouri. Each of the works was published separately and anonymously between 1738 and 1748, with a fictitious or, as here, non-existent imprint. Much later, they were assembled into a collection and published under Caylus’ name as Oeuvres badines, 1787, with a few minor alterations.
Les Fêtes roulantes was inspired by the occasion of the marriage of the Dauphin and Maria Josepha of Saxony on 9th February 1747 and by the celebrations that were put on throughout the capital. The first chapter, ‘Le Char de la Gloire’, compares the festivities with those of the Dauphin’s first marriage, in February 1745, to the Infanta Maria Teresa who had died in July 1746 after giving birth to their only child. Caylus manages to include a deft bit of self-promotion in the ‘one little oversight’ of the organisers of that first wedding, for not having commissioned some author to record these earlier festivities, which would have saved everyone seeing ‘some miserable authors celebrating the subject with works such as Les Bals de Bois’ - Caylus’ own work, of course, the title a play on words referring to the ‘Bal des Ifs’ (Ball of the Yew Trees) the extravagant Versailles party held during the celebrations, where the King and his friends were disguised as trimmed yew trees.
The title of the present work, ‘the rolling parties’, refers to the massive carnival floats that paraded the streets of Paris during the celebrations for the dauphin’s second marriage. Following a brief introduction, the work is divided into six sections or chapters, five ‘chariots’ and one short story, ‘Histoire de la Princesse Lacune’ (pp. 50-58). The five ‘chars de parade’ are ‘Char de la Gloire’, ‘le Char de l’Hymen’, ‘le Vaisseau de la Ville’, ‘le Char de Cerès’, ‘le Char de Bacchus’ and ‘Sixiéme Char Qui n’a pas paru; Par un Auteur qui ne paroître jamais’. The work concludes with three songs and a table of contents.
Particularly interesting is the chapter related to Bacchus’s chariot, which is represented in its entirety by punctuation and covers ten pages: eight full pages of punctuation (but for page numbers), and two part-pages. A note at the end of the chapter explains that one of their authors, charged with the description of the Bacchus float, thought he could get rid of it by sending a blank (‘a cru s'en debarasser en hous envoyant une lacune’). Angry that one of their number should take mistake a blank for nothing - ‘qui croit qu’une lacune n’est rien’ - this becomes the cue for the inclusion of the ‘Histoire de la Princesse Lacune’ (pp. 50-58).

A scarce early edition of this notorious licentious novel, attributed both the Nougaret and Restif de la Bretonne, presented as the true memoirs of an attractive young lady, one Madame de Vilfranc. It caused a considerable flurry on publication, was republished at least eight times and was widely accepted as a genuine set of memoirs. Even Voltaire was said to have been taken in by the hoax.
However, this latter statement calls into question the date of the first edition, as Voltaire died in 1778. There does appear to be some uncertainty as to when the novel first appeared. MMF states that Barbier, Gay, Mornet and Quérard all give an edition of 1776 and Delcro an edition of 1778, but they were unable to find it. I have been unable to find any trace of an earlier edition in any of the usual on-line databases, but whilst Cioranescu and MMF go for the 1779 first edition, the combined weight of Barbier, Gay, Mornet, Quérard and Delcro is hard to wave aside. Besides, there are at least two 1779 editions, not distinguished by MMF or Cioranescu, the one listed by MMF, with pp. iv, 144; 159 and the present edition (Trinity College Dublin only listed in Copac).
The novel, described as ‘assez érotique’ by Gay, has also been attributed to Restif de la Bretonne, with whom Nougaret collaborated on a number of occasions. ‘On trouve encore là un cordon de sonnette indiscret’, says Gay. The setting is amongst the merchant classes and the action takes place in Paris. In addition to the contemporary popularity of the work, it seems to have had a following in subsequent centuries, published by Lalouette-Douce in 1885, by Edmond Vairel in 1951 and translated into German in 1920 and in 1978.