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An important economic treatise on the causes of financial distress in France, with suggested political and economic solutions. Boullainvilliers’ frank exposé of the last years of Louis XIV’s reign was rather too much for the authorities, who had it condemned on publication. His political writings - ‘original to the point of eccentricity’, says Christopher Betts in the New Oxford Companion to Literature in French - were hostile to royal policy and express an extreme version of feudalism, ‘le chef d’œuvre de l’esprit humain’, in which power is returned from the king to the nobles. An expansion of the economic sections of his more famous État de la France, the present work is dedicated to the duc d’Orléans. In common with all Boulainvilliers’ works, the present memoir was published posthumously and outside France.
Boulainvilliers presents his argument in six parts or memoirs, the most striking of which is the second, that comes down heavily against the financiers and proposes a separate office for the state treasure, the third memoir, which attacks arbitrary taxation and the sixth, particularly resonant, which attacks poor financial administration. Boulainvilliers may have been an eccentric, but many of his economic theories were well ahead of his time and anticipated the ideas of the physiocrats, by whom he was much admired.
‘Some scholars happily ascribe all six memoranda under consideration to Boulainvilliers in order (it appears) to enhance his reputation - for once an attractive reputation - as an aristocratic liberal or progressive reformer of the 18th century. In fact, one may exclude from the Boulainvilliers corpus two or even three of the six memoranda under consideration. In keeping with Boulainvilliers' character, the author of memorandum 1 claims no expertise in fiscal matters, recommends instead that some faithful, enlightened, and wise persons screen any financial advice or projects submitted to the regent, and urges him above all to assemble the Estates. Equally consonant with Boullainvilliers' character is memorandum 4’ (H. A. Ellis, S. 244f).

Second edition of Dieudonné Thiebault’s detailed memoirs of the court of Frederick II covering Frederick himself, his family, the court, the Academy, schools, philosophers and intellectuals, and the military and civil government of Prussia. Thiebault had first gone to Berlin in 1765 to take up a post as Professor of Literature at the Academy on the recommendation of d’Alembert. He subsequently became an advisor to the king, helping him with his addresses to the Académie des sciences de Berlin and editing many of his works prior to publication. Thiebault remained in Berlin for twenty years, where he was given a place in the Academy and was granted a pension by Frederick.

Provenance: Michel-Frédéric Pillet-Will (1781-1860), with black labels lettered ‘Pillet-Will’ in gilt at the foot of the spines.

An attractive copy of one of Mercier's most important works, a collection of short essays, some written in the form of dream sequences, and one or two 'contes'. Some parts had previously been published in Mercier's Songes philosophiques, 1768, but this was very much part of Mecier's distinctive style. 'He published prodigiously by recycling passages from one book to another and stretching essays into multi-volume tracts. His major works - L'An 2440, Tableau de Paris, and Mon Bonnet de Nuit - therefore have a formless character. They are composed of short chapters on a wide variety of subjects, which Mercier cobbled together without worrying about narrative coherence. When a book caught on, he expanded it, cutting and pasting and fighting off pirates as he advanced from one edition to the next. The result was never elegant, but it often had a gripping quality, because Mercier knew how to observe the world around him and to make it come alive in anecdotes and essays. There is no better writer to consult if one wants to get some idea of how Paris looked, sounded, smelled, and felt on the eve of the Revolution' (Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers, 1996, p. 118).
The work is made up of two distinct parts. In the first edition, volumes III and IV bear exactly the same imprint as the present edition but have a different pagination, viz. pp. [iv], 390; [iv], 382. It was inordinately popular and many editions followed, both in two and in four volumes. MMF lists a total of twenty-six editions. The final two volumes were also published under the title, Mon Bonnet du Matin.

A curious Ossian style production, with a Norwegian saga written in Italian terza rima and printed alongside the supposedly English prose original, ‘Almurka and Snivenus’. Set in early medieval Norway where the enlightened monarchs Alminda (the name has been changed to be more resonant with the Italian language) and Sniveno reign over a peaceful nation, though under the rule of Britain. One sorrowful day the King of Britain summons Sniveno, ‘come to the English court; an high reason of state requires it’ and despite the anguished entreaties of his wife, fearful of the raging seas, he submits to the order and embarks for Britain. A few days later, the vessel ‘was assailed in a dark night by a terrible storm. The ship was flinged up and down by the waves and beated at once by winds, hail, and rain. The thunder bursted in the darkness. The Master of the ship was appaled for the danger; the thunderbolt rending the clouds sended on the surge a flash of livid light. The sailors had lost their art and spirit. The vessel was plunged down almost topsyturvy and cryes and groans were heard. The whirlwind broke masts and sails; the surpassing and raged waves fluttered around the bodys of agonizing and dead men, and some of them not yet entirely drowned uttered in their throat with a dying groan the name of their fathers, children and wives’. The spirit of Snivenus assumes the form of the drowned king and returns in a dream to Almurka, who goes to the shore where she finds her husband’s corpse and promptly dies of grief. The Italian poem is clearly the original, but the florid English translation, so clearly non-native, is charming.
Alminda e Sniveno first appeared in Milan in 1818 and this second edition was first published in 1821. OCLC lists only the 1821 edition of Novella Romantica, at Bodleian and the BN. The Bodleian copy is catalogued as pp. [24], which brings the volume to the conclusion of ‘Alminda e Sniveno’, with a final Italian poem printed on the verso. In the present volume, the dates on the imprint have been altered to 1823 and a further eight pages have been added, comprising Italian poems on mainly historical themes. The second work in the volume, Pascoli’s Improvvisi, contains a selection of verse on various subjects; it was first published in 1812 (actually 1821) with slightly differing contents. The divisional title, ‘Rime Faceto-Morali’ has been stamped ‘Estemporanee’. The final work in the volume is a New Year’s poem for 1823. Although not recorded as by Pascoli, its inclusion in this volume and the similarity with his other publications, would suggest his authorship.

A scarce edition, in three parts, of five major works by the Italian physician, historian and biographer Paolo Giovio, including his account of Muscovy and his history of Britain.
The first part features the ‘Elogia doctorum virorum’ of 1546 - an encyclopaedia of early humanism celebrating with short biographies important scholars of the time including Trapetiuntius, Regiomontanus, Thomas Linacre, Copernicus, Machiavelli and Zwingli. The second includes his ‘Descriptiones Britanniae, Scotiae, Hyberniae & Orchadum’ of 1548, devoted to the history and ethnography of the British Isles, followed by ‘elogia’ of important British figures including Thomas More, chronological annals of the kingdom and a genealogical diagram of the kings of England. The third part begins with his influential account of Muscovy first published in 1525: a fundamental source for the knowledge of Russia in 16th-century Europe, with sections on its history, customs, religion and language. His first and less famous ‘De Romanis Piscibus libellus’ of 1524 is also included, an account of all the kinds of fish which could be caught in the River Tiber, as well as ‘Descriptio Larii Lacus’, a topographical account of Lake Como, near which Giovio lived.
In a fine contemporary binding, probably from southern Germany: the blind stamps of the Crucifixion, with the snake wrapped around the Cross and St Peter is typical of sixteenth century bindings from Bavaria and Saxony.

A scarce novel first published earlier the same year under a false ‘Philadelphie’ imprint. Set in Paris and provincial France, the novel is concerned with the travels, misfortunes, entanglements and romantic adventures of the hero, Paulin, ‘un coquin charmant’ and the Comte de Walter. Full of incident, the novel includes an ambush, kidnappings, a hermit, mistaken identities, touching heroics and faithful lovers, who are happily reunited in the closing chapter.
The author, Charles François Grandville, was a prominent actor who had a successful career at the Comédie-Française throughout the 1820s. This is his only published work, written as a young man who describes himself as a ’Comédien du Boulevard’. The work is prefaced by a ‘Conversation sur l’Auteur et son Roman’, in which two young girls, Claire and Rose, discuss the novel. Rose has been reading the book and is half in love with its hero, Paulin. She eventually persuades Claire, who dislikes reading, to go to the bookseller and buy a copy before it sells out and she is forced to wait for a second edition.

An early edition - for many years thought to be the first - of Diderot’s first original work, bound in nineteenth century morocco. An immediate furore followed its initial publication and it was condemned to be burnt by the Paris Parlement for its dangerous and anti-religious content: ‘the venom of the most criminal opinions that the depravity of human reason is capable of’. Diderot’s original manuscript had been purchased by the bookseller Durand and the first editions were printed in Paris at the clandestine press of l’Epine. It was to become one of Diderot’s most popular and controversial works, running to at least eighteen editions in the eighteenth century and prompting numerous refutations.
At this stage in his life, the young Diderot was a Deist and in the Pensées he sets out to demonstrate the existence of God through evidence of the material world. He attacks atheism in this work, but also criticises revealed religion and religious asceticism and challenges the existence of miracles. He writes eloquently of human passions and argues for the reconciliation of feeling with reason. The work is presented in the form of sixty-two short chapters, some of which are little more than maxims, brief and quotable in the manner of La Rochefoucauld, such as: ’A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it’; ‘One may demand of me that I should seek truth but not that I should find it’ and ‘Skepticism is the first step towards truth’. The work concludes with a final detailed index.
This is one of four editions that appeared in 1746, all with the imprint ‘A la Haye, aux dépens de la compagnie’. The present printing was long thought to be the first edition, partly on account of its errors in pagination, but Adams demonstrates that it is third in priority. Furthermore he concludes that the present edition was entirely reset, rather than as previously thought a few corrections being made to a number of pages. The printer’s ornament is the same as both previous editions, but the double rule in the imprint of this copy measures 50mm, rather than the 45mm as called for by Adams.
With an attractive engraved frontispiece in the manner of Eisen, in which the voluptuous figure of Truth standing on the right removes the mask from the foul looking figure of Superstition, who is lounging on the floor with a broken sceptre. In our copy the plate measures 98 x 57 mm.

A scarce book of considerable significance, this was the first work to introduce the ideas of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) to the French-speaking world. In the long preface, Villers discusses the impact of Kant’s works and their principal opposition, comparing him in importance with Descartes and Copernicus. ‘C’est en 1781 que parut le livre à jamais mémorable, Critique de la Raison Pur... une doctrine nouvelle [qui] ruinait toutes les métaphysiques qui l’avaient précédé... Ce livre renfermait la plus désolante et la plus irréfragable définition du mot savoir, chose que tant de savans ignorent’ (pp. xix-xx). Villers highlights Kant as one of two game-changing thinkers of the age, the other being Lavoisier: ‘La nouvelle chimie, la nouvelle philosophie, sont les deux tendances majeures de notre âge, les deux degrés scientifiques les plus remarquables qu’a monté notre génération’ (p. x).
Villers expresses his surprise that such a key thinker has remained unknown in France: ‘Depuis près de vingt ans, une nouvelle philosophie qui intéresse tout le savoir humaine... est encore inconnue aux Français, et il ne s’en est pas encore trouvé un seul qui ait entrepris de l’étudier et de la faire connaître à sa patrie... Mais il semble qu’il y ait une distance infranchissable de l’esprit français à l’esprit allemand; ils sont placés sur deux sommets entre lesquels il y a un abîme. C’est sur cet abîme que j’ai entrepris de jeter un pont’ (pp. lx-lxiv).
Villers studied at the Benedictine College in Metz and then went on to the School of Applied Artillery in the same town, where he developed an interest in animal magnetism. After the French revolution, he moved to Göttingen where he had an affair with the German intellectual Dorothea von Schlözer, subsequently moving in with her and her husband, Mattheus Rodde, where the three lived openly as a menage à trois. It was Villers’ French nationality that protected the household during the French occupation in 1806, a narrative that is described in his a letter written to Fanny de Beauharnais and published as Lettre contenant un récit des événements qui se sont passés à Lübeck le 6 novembre 1806, [sans lieu] 1807, a popular work which in later editions carried Fanny de Beauharnais’ name on the title-page.

An attracitve Cambridge printed anthology based on an edition originally prepared by Henri Estienne, in a distinctive, probably continental, contemporary heraldic vellum binding. This collection of Greek poetry, printed in parallel text with the Latin throughout, contains the Cambridge physician Ralph Winterton’s commentary on Hesiod.

An attractive copy of a scarce edition of this major political essay by Quevedo, first published in 1626. This edition is published by the same Confraternity of St. John the Evangelist who also published an edition of his works in the same year.
‘The treatise attempts to establish the theoretical groundwork for a governmental system based on Christian ideals. The best form of government, according to Quevedo, is a monarchy, one whose authority is absolute because it issues from divine will. The king should govern using Christ as his supreme model. Much attention is paid to the qualities required of the king’s counselors, they being probably as important as the king himself. Quevedo rejects tyrannicide as the solution for an evil monarch, choosing instead to present the latter as a form of divine punishment which must be suffered in silence. The work contains few truly original ideas, its significance stemming principally from the mastery of its style as well as the great popularity it achieved’ (Bleiberg, Dictionary of the Literature of the Iberian Peninsula, II, p. 1336).

A delightful anonymous work in which narratives and philosophical digression are happily mixed. Consisting of a total of eight ‘Promenades’, each of which is loosely intended to elucidate one aspect of human passion. In the author’s brief introduction, he laments that the only explanation for the prevailing morality and behaviour is that men have become children. ‘La plûpart des hommes ont aujourd’hui abandonné les lectures sérieuses & instructives, parce que l’application qu’elles demandent, se trouve absolument incompatible, avec l’esprit de volupté qui les domine’ (Préface de l’Auteur, p. iii).
In the first Promenade, Monsieur de Clairenville meets a knight of Malta and falls into conversation with him. The knight tells him of his aventures, including the tragic story of the beautiful Sophie. The second Promenade, subtitled ‘Sur les Passions’, contains an essay on the education of youth and a tale about a young Paris lawyer. The third Promenade, ‘Sur l’Usage des Passions’, includes a prayer to Saint Christopher, a discussion of Jesuits and monks and a section on Reason. The fourth is ‘Sur l’Amour’, with reflections and a story of a young lady who could not cure herself of this malady. The fifth, ‘Sur la Colère’, gives the history of Leonore and Olympia. The sixth Promenade provides a discussion of Avarice, with a strange miscellany of reflections on France, trade in Mississippi and John Law, concluding with ‘Histoire curieuse d’un Avare, qui avoit beaucoup gagné au Mississipi’. Seven is Ambition, with the tale of a persecuted cleric and eight is Hatred, which begins with a conversation between Monsieur de Clairenville and a Carmelite, outlines the author’s general system for understanding this passion and concludes with the final story, ‘Histoire de la Comtesse de.... les excès où elle se porte pour satisfaire sa Haine contre son Mari’.
First published in 1723 (see Jones p. 35) under the slightly different title of Promenades de Mr. de Clairenville, and then republished in 1743 and the present edition under the present title. It was republished in the first volume of the Bibliothèque universelle des romans, April 1782. Despite its evident popularity, with three editions spanning a number of years, this unusual work is now very scarce.

An excellent copy of this charming poetical miscellany, known as the 'Recueil de Barbin' and first published in 1692. It contains the major poems of Ronsard, Villon, Marot, du Bellay and Baïf, as well as a host of minor poems by these and numerous less well-known authors. This expanded version (the original was in five volumes) is one of two printings of the collection in the eighteenth century, both published in 1752, reflecting an interesting resurgence in the study of early French poetry. The miscellany is arranged in six volumes, by author, with a brief biographical notice on each poet. The biographies are ascribed to Fr. Barbin, son of Claude Barbin, the great bookseller who first published the collection. This copy has a good provenance, coming from the de Guillebon family, with contemporary heraldic bookplates and a later booklabel of Madame Guillebon, the younger, circa 1800.

'Une anthologie de la poésie française faite par les classiques éveille l'intérêt; de plus elle a connu un grand succès... On ne saurait exagérer son influence' (p. 109, _Dictionnaire des Lettres Françaises, Fayard, 1996).

Gay III 978.

An important work, edited by Holbach, and first published in 1761, Boulanger's Recherches sur l'Origine du Despotisme Oriental was intended as an introduction and key to Montesquieu's Esprit des Loix. An important and widely-read treatise, it was incorporated in shortened form in the Encyclopédie, under the title 'Oeconomie politique'. It is offered here complete with the first edition of its companion volume, the so-called continuation by Boulanger, entitled Dissertation sur Elie et Enoch. The two volumes are uniformly bound and the second work comes complete with both the half-titles, the 'Dissertations' half-title and the additional half-title which links it to the Recherches, this latter being more often discarded. Included also in this volume (pp. 159-216) is Benjamin Stillingfleet's Traité Mathématique sur le Bonheur with an introductory letter by the translator, Etienne de Silhouette.

A scarce pirated edition of the Abbé Raynal’s popular work which ran to several editions in 1781, many of which bear the ‘Londres’ imprint. In the present case, the Londres imprint is probably false; ESTC suggests a French or Dutch printing.

An unsophisticated copy of this delightful and very scarce sentimental novel which charts the fortunes of the eponymous heroine who despite her modest birth - ‘d’une petite naissance’ - is elevated in society by the intervention of generous benefactors. It was republished under several different titles, L’Education de l’Amour, followed in 1769 and finally Agathe et Clairfons ou les effets de la haine, de l’amour et de l’amitié, 1796.

The author, an officer in the cavalry who went under the name Desboulmiers, was a popular novelist ‘connu comme littérateur dans le genre léger où il a fait preuve d’un certain esprit’ (DLF). He also had an interest in the theatre and a broad knowledge of its history. His two most important works on theatre history, Histoire anecdotique et raisonnée du théâtre italien, Paris 1769 and Histoire du théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique, Paris 1769, are still consulted today.

A delightful volume of verse psalms and hymns printed in the small city of Crema, near to Milan. An elegant production, with wide margins, the text is followed by the musical score for each of the psalms and hymns, with music by the popular composers Giuseppe Gazzaniga (1743-1818), musical director of Crema Cathedral and Stefano Pavesi (1779-1850), another local Crema composer, mainly of operas. Tadini prefaces the volume with an essay on music and poetry (pp. 3-23), printed in two columns. Poet and musician, Luigi Tadini created a centre of the arts in his beautiful Palazzo Tadini in Lovere, on the shores of Lake Iseo. It still thrives today as the Accademia Tadini, with a music school and prestigious Tadini International Music Competition.

A scarce Swedish dissertation about the Ossian poems published while the authenticity debate was still raging. Ossian fever arrived fairly early in Sweden, with translations by Gustaf Knos published in Abo tidningar and Gateborqska magazinet, 1765, although the full texts were not published until much later when they appeared as Skaldstycken af Ossian, Upsala, 1794-1800. We have not been able to discover anything about the author of this piece, but it was written under the guidance of Jacob Axelsson Lindblom, a Swedish scholar of some note and author of Disputation de Poematis Ossionis. At the time this thesis Lindblom was the university librarian at Upsala, becoming extraordinary professor at the university in the following year. The dissertation is written in Latin with the excerpts from Ossian quoted in Swedish translation.

For an interesting account of the early translations of Ossian into Swedish, see Howard Gaskill, The Reception of Ossian in Europe, 2004, pp. 198-208.

An attractive, unsophisticated copy in contemporary decorative wrappers of this Prussian officer’s account of England and Italy. A professor of history with an interest in contemporary European politics, Archenholz wrote widely on current events. From 1791 he lived in France and ran a German language newspaper, Minerva, which reported the events of the French Revolution. His initial enthusiasm for the Revolution was challenged by its increasing violence and in 1792 the opinions expressed in his paper forced him to flee France in order to escape the guillotine.
The present work was originally published as England und Italien, Leipzig 1785. It was a very popular work which saw many editions and was translated into French and English. This is one of several editions of this French translation by the poet and dramatist, Ludwig von Bilderbeck. A two volume edition of the first part of the work only, that on England, was printed in Brussels by le Francq as Tableau de l’Angleterre, contenant des anecdotes curieuses et intéressantes, 1788. In the same year, there was a Gotha edition printed by Ettinger, including both parts on England and Italy and also a two volume Paris edition printed by Volland, including both English and Italian parts. Both parts were also translated into English, the first two volumes as A picture of England, containing a description of the laws, customs and manners of England, London 1789 and the final volume as A picture of Italy, London 1791.
‘La Grande-Bretagne, cette reine des îles, est si différente de tous les autres Etats de l’Europe, par la forme de son gouvernement, par ses loix, ses usages, ses mœurs et la manière d’agir et de penser de ses habitans, qu’elle parait plutôt appartenir à un autre globe qu’à celui où nous vivons. Le contraste est sur-tout frappant lorsqu’on passe de France en Angleterre. On se croit transporté dans une autre planète’ (I pp. 1-2).

A selection of light-hearted essays on a number of subjects including women, justice, monks, literature and fashion. The author, an obscure writer called Nolivos Saint-Cyr, was a captain in the infantry and a self-styled 'comédien', who sometimes signed himself 'Laval'. G. Monval published a biography of him in 1902, is entitled Un Comédien nomade, mort aux Invalides. His Tableau du Siècle is written in an easy, readable style and covers a range of entertaining and at times contentious subjects. One nice aspect of his style is the creation of characters to illustrate his points, so that instead of writing, for example, 'all women are dreadful', he writes 'all women are dreadful. Emilie was born into a rich family &c. &c.' and brings the particular vice or virtue to life with a little story.
'Si la religion est le prétexte de tout, les femmes en sont la veritable cause … On peut dire enfin, avec vérité, que si les femmes conduisent & reglent tout, elles travaillent à se render dignes d'être consultées. C'est, à les bien définir, un melange de légéreté, & de prudence; d'amour des plaisirs, & de respect pour la vertu; de bonté, & de vengeance; d'ambition & de générosité: En un mot, les femmes de notre siécle sont de véritables caméléons' (p. 31).

A delightful and vivid portrayal of the salons and artistic haunts of Paris society. Presented in a series of short chapters, with plentiful dialogue, short anecdotes and lively descriptions, the subjects covered include a music lesson, a scene in a café, an evening at the Tuilleries, the opera, a ball, a visit to the doctor, a supper party, dreams, rebels, springtime and ‘the real pleasures’ of life. The dedication is addressed ‘O Vous, Sexe charmant, qui savez tout embellier, malheureusement même jusqu’au vice... Les femmes sont chez nous les véritables précepteurs des hommes: elles aiment les sciences, les arts, les talens & les encouragent; elles veulent les trouver dans le cercle qui les entoure’.
Authorship of this work has been hotly contested over the years. Paul Lacroix, in his bibliography of Restif, not only attributed the work to Restif, but claimed it to be among his best writings: ‘Ce sont les plus agréables pages que Restif ait écrites, et tout ce que nous avons lu dans ce joli ouvrage est bien du Restif, de l’excellent Restif’ (Lacroix p. 334). Rives Child, on the other hand, states that the Tableaux are the work of the Prince de Ligne and adds, ‘Je ne vois absolument rien de Restif là-dedans. A mon avis, cet ouvrage fut écrit par quelqu’un qui a passé pas mal de temps au Pays-Bas, peut-être un diplomate français’ (Rives Child, Restif de la Bretonne, Témoignages et Jugements. Bibliographie, 1949, p. 312). In Cohen-de Ricci it is listed under Restif but with the proviso that all the chapters were not written by Restif. It has more recently been attributed to Stanislas Jean de Boufflers.
First published earlier in the same year, the work was originally intended to accompany a suite of plates by Moreau. These were reused in a number of later editions but were not included in the present edition, which has been entirely reset and which, unlike other editions, has no mention of plates on the title-page. The chapters of later editions also vary, but in this edition they are the same as listed by Lacroix for the first edition and all appear in the same order.