Search

First published as Soupers de la cour in 1755, Menon’s work first appeared in English in 1767 in a translation by Bernard Clermont under the title The Art of Modern Cookery Displayed, Consisting of the most approved methods of cookery [&c.], London, printed for the translator, 1767. This is its first appearance under the new title which was to be retained for the third edition of 1776, in which the translator’s name appears on the title-page. With a six-page ‘Translator’s Apology’ in addition to the ‘Author’s Advertisement’. In his fascinating apology, Clermont reveals many of the concerns of the eighteenth century chef, while pointing to some of the key differences between English and French cuisine. He also writes about the challenges of translation: ‘This Book was published in four small Volumes. I thought it too full of Words and of Repetitions, and that the Sense of the Author could be explained, without all the volubility of the French Language, which I have (as much as I was capable) supplied with the Expressiveness of the English’ (p. vi).

‘Menon’s book covers menus, hors d’oeuvres, entrées, and some deserts. An entire chapter is devoted to sherbets or ices and ice cream. Like Marin that other great contemporary of Menon’s, both placed emphasis on their sauces. Menon’s recipes were surprisingly varied, coming not only from France but Italy, Germany, Ceylon and Flanders and used in everything from hors d’oeuvres to deserts’ (Harrison, Une Affaire du Gout, 1983).

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.

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 survival of an anonymous attack on Madame de Charrière, claiming to be written by her as a supplement to her Lettres Neuchâteloises. In these two supposedly additional letters, Madame de Charrière is presented as being self-abnegating and in complete agreement with the contemporary criticisms of herself and her writing. ‘Oui, je l’avoue’, begins the first letter, ‘plaire, briller par l’esprit; voilà ce qui peut seul m’intéresser: aucune considération ne m’arrête’. She ‘admits’ that the Lettres de Lausanne had no moral purpose and that she knew nothing of the city, having spent less than 24 hours there. In the second letter the confessional tone of the ‘author’ goes even further: ‘I want to talk about myself a moment’, it begins, ‘I am rude on principle, contemptuous by system, bizarre by vanity... I desire only the pleasures of pride, and a restless spirit follows me everywhere’.

Isabelle de Charrière’s two major epistolary novels, Lettres Neuchâteloises, Amsterdam 1784 and Lettres écrites de Lausanne, Toulouse 1785, together with its genuine continuation, Caliste, ou la continuation des Lettres écrites de Lausanne, were outspoken attacks on Swiss society in which she argued against political corruption and aristocratic privilege in favour of moral, religious and social emancipation. It is not entirely surprising that her writings provoked such an attack as this. What is particularly interesting is the spiteful personal nature of this attack

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 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."

An unusual project in that the plates came first: starting in 1775 with a first set of a dozen engravings by Freudenberg published by Prault, which were followed by a second and third set of engravings by Moreau. Restif was then approached to provide a text to accompany Moreau’s plates. The full work was first published in Neuwied sur le Rhin, 1789 in a sumptuous folio edition with 36 pages of text and Moreau’s original 26 plates.
The first English piracy was published by Charles Dilly in 1790 and has the same collation as the present edition, but was published with only two engraved plates, providing frontispieces to each of the two volumes. The second English piracy noted by Rives Child (’Londres 1793’), was published with a new suite of 26 plates, one for each of the 26 chapters, newly interpreted after the English style, published by W. Hinton and with captions in English and French. However, internal evidence suggests that the present edition is a reissue of Rives Child XXXVI/2, the Charles Dilly edition with the frontispieces, as a footnote in the Avis des Editeurs states: ‘Dans l’Edition originaire de cet Ouvrage, on a embelli chaque histoire d’une estampe intéressante, dessinée & gravée par M. Moreau le jeune... Le Libraire qui présente au Public cette Edition, a choisi deux de ces Estampes, qu’il a fait graver par M. Heath; & il en a placé à la tête de chaque Volume’ (I, ii). This edition therefore appears to be an unrecorded piracy, being a reprint of the Dilly edition with two frontispieces rather than the full suite of anglicised Moreau plates. However, this copy unfortunately has no plates: although uncut and in contemporary boards, a reback and new spine make it hard to know whether they were ever present. Despite this, we offer this copy as an interesting Restif text which was not often reprinted and is scarce in any edition.

A scarce edition of Marmontel’s block-buster, published in the same year as the first edition. MMF list no less than ELEVEN Paris editions of 1777, all printed by Lacombe, with the present edition listed as the second, with its imprint clearly claiming a Paris and Lacombe publication: ‘A Paris, Chez Lacombe, Libraire, rue de Tournon, près le Luxembourg’. However, ESTC includes this edition as a piracy, ‘probably printed in Dublin’, with a false Paris address. This would account for the error on the title page, where the masculine word for volume is made feminine: ‘Tome Première / Tome Seconde’, a mistake no French printer or compositor would make.
Critic, novelist and playwright, Marmontel began life as the son of a poor tailor before coming to Paris on the advice of Voltaire to pursue a career in literature. His Contes moraux, 1755-1765, fictional tales praising philosophy and the practice of virtue, were enormously popular in France and throughout Europe, particularly in England where there were numerous translations. But it was his historical romance, Belisaire, with its plea for civil toleration of Protestants, that brought him most lasting fame and became one of the most controversial novels of its time, condemned both by the Sorbonne and the archbishop of Paris. Les Incas ou la Déstruction de l’Empire du Perou is Marmontel’s answer to the censure he received for Bélisaire. In this novel, he describes the cruelties in Spanish America and demonstrates that they are entirely the result of the religious intolerance of the invaders.

An early edition of this popular satirical and licentious novel which was first published under the title Tanzai et Neadarne, Histoire Japonoise, printed in ‘Pekin’, or Paris, in 1734. The narrative provides a thinly veiled satire on the Cardinal de Rohan and the Duchesse de Maine. It tells of the love story between Prince Tanzaï and Princess Néardarné. L’ecumoire, or Tanzaï et Néadarné, was widely criticised as a shocking demonstration of political and social criticism, and Crebillon was publicly shamed for being irreligious for, as well as criticising Cardinal Rohan, the novel is seen as an attack on the papal bull Ugenitis. Following the publication, Crebillon was imprisoned briefly in Vincennes. Despite this, the novel’s popularity gained him admittance to the salons of Paris. Orientalism was becoming very popular, and the libertine values and personal attacks found a ready audience in pre-revolutionary Paris.

A scarce anonymous satirical novel set at the court of Louis XIV and telling of the intrigues and scandals of court life. In particular, the narrative is concerned with the adventures of the comte de Montrevel, the chevalier de Lorraine and the princesse de Monaco. The imprint is of course fictitious and it is thought to have been printed in Holland. Another edition followed under the title L’homme à bonne fortune, ou le galant à l’épreuve, 1691 and the work was also reprinted under the present title in 1712.

A delightful illustrated set of sixteen moral tales in verse written for the use of children. The majority are cautionary tales, warning children against the bad effects of indiscretion, jealousy, anger, curiosity, obstinacy and presumption. Each of the tales is followed by an explicatory moral, also in verse, and a delightful, slightly naive, engraved plate. Alongside the cautionary tales are verse tales depicting the value of value of various virtues such as gratitude and the careful use of talents, also tales of birth and circumstance and a dialogue between a governess, her pupil and a gardener.
In his preface, the ‘editor’ discusses his interest in children’s education and the importance of combining clarity and simplicity in the text with a message that is easy for a child to remember. He adds that it is this work’s success in the early editions in France that has persuaded him to offer it to the young people of England. A second preface, by the author, warns against the fables of La Fontaine as the earliest education for young children and explains that he has created these first tales - ‘of which many more are needed’, he grants - in order to present the ‘measure of morality’ without resorting to the world of fairyland.
First published in Paris in 1781, this was a popular work in France; it was also reprinted by the Walther brothers in Dresden, 1790.

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.

A scarce use of ‘Cosmopolite’, a word first coined by Diogenes the Cynic (c. 412-323 BC) from the Greek words ‘kosmos’ (the world, the universe) and ‘polites’ (citizen), used in this instance to describe an author. After a brief appearance in French literature in the sixteenth century, the word ‘Cosmopolite’ had largely fallen into disuse until the middle of the eighteenth century, when there was a surge in its use, both in describing otherwise anonymous authors and in defining fictional characters. In this instance, the word is used as a marketing plot, a self-conscious identification of the author with what was at this time an edgy word, much in vogue in enlightenment circles - a badge of honour denoting tolerance and enlightenment - in order to bridge the gap between nations, as this is essentially a piece of political propoganda written to further foreign relations between the Netherlands and America. At the heart of this letter is a discussion of nationhood, liberty and the present alliances and security of Amsterdam and Holland.

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 feminist pamphlet written at the height of the Revolution discussing women’s rights and the place of religious orders for women. Following the section title, a drop-head title on A1 supplies the questions addressed in this motion: ‘Le bonheur des hommes est-il dépendant de celui des femmes? Quels sont pour elles les moyens de l’établir? Les Couvents de Religieuses doivent-ils être supprimés?’. The author of this scarce pamphlet describes as a wife and mother of an unspecified number of sons (footnote to p. 4). She has been identified by Mouret as a Madame Bastille, ‘à qui nous devons la Bibliothèque des Romans’ (see Mme Mouret, Annales de l’Education, vol. II, pp. 35-36). A note before the colophon advertises the pamphlet as available for 6 sols ‘chez l’auteur rue des Poitevins, no. 20. The publisher’s details are given in the colophon.

A lovely copy of this scarce novel by the Comte de Caylus, first published in 1742. An aristocratic dilettante, Caylus was a popular novelist and writer of short stories or contes badines - ranging from fairy tales to sentimental intrigue and oriental fables - which are always witty and usually slightly disreputable. Alongside this reflection of his place in the gayest circles of Paris society, Caylus was also a great collector of art and antiquities, a scholar and connoisseur, painter, etcher and patron of contemporary artists. His major work of scholarship, Recueil d’antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques, romaines et gauloises, is increasingly recognised for its significant importance in the development of modern archaeology.
Soirées du Bois de Boulogne is a loosely entwined collection of six short stories, or ‘soirées’, set in an apartment near the Bois de Boulogne where the hero, the comte de Trémaillé, has been sent to recover his health after an injury sustained at the Battle of Clausen. After happily spending a week there taking the air in the park and content with his books for company, early one morning he is surprised to see a carriage arriving at his door, with several ladies and a large entourage. Discussing their recent histories and swapping stories of unhappy liaisons, his companions, who include English visitors as well as French compatriots, decide to narrate to one another the stories of their lives. The names have of course, as the dedication makes clear, been changed.
The first story, which has for title ‘Histoire du Commandeur Hautpré’, begins with a summary of all the romantic novels he had been reading which had determined him to find his Angélique or his Clorinde. The second story is told by the young Englishwoman, Madame de Rockfields, who, after complaining about being forced to entertain them in a foreign language, insists that her story will have nothing about convents in it. ‘In France’, she says, ‘it is always about convents’. The Marquis de Montgeüil follows, and tells the audience of his going into Spain, ‘la Patrie du Roman’, narrating the ‘Histoire de l’Abbé de Longuerive’. The second volume begins with the fourth soirée, ‘Histoire du Comte de Prémaillé’ which tells of his love for the beautiful Constance and of her being sent to a convent. The fifth story gives the ‘Histoire du Comte de Crémailles’, including the correspondence between the unhappy fugitive, Mlle de Vauxfleurs, and an Abbess (more convents...). The final story is another English one, ‘Histoire de Mylord Wynghton’, a tragic tale which hurtles from the birth of the French court of the exiled James II and the birth of his son, the Old Pretender, to the political turbulence of the hero’s homeland - ‘L’Angleterre le pays du monde le plus fertile en Mécontens’ - where the hero and Dorothy fall in love but through a series of disasters and misunderstandings, mistaken identities, unforgiving parents, spells in Newgate and galleys bound for America, Dorothy takes her own life and dies in her lover’s arms in the final ‘sanglante Catastrope’.

A scarce epistolary novel which examines the types and nature of love through a selection of episodes narrated by an abundance of characters. Attributed to an obscure lawyer from Rouen, this is erotic fiction presented as scientific abstract, with titles, divisions and subdivisions suggesting a philosophy of love in an attempt to ennoble this loosely connected collection of licentious stories. As the title suggests, the work is divided into three parts, for the ‘three ages’ of love: when love is young, when it enters middle age and finally when it reaches decrepitud: ‘le tems où l’Amour se déclare; celui de son progrès; celui de son déclin’ (Avertissement, p. 49). After a wide-ranging preface, the introductory material begins with ‘Naissance de ce Porte-Feuille’ (pp. xiii-xxxi), signed by Le Milord Sédrei, and ‘Dessein de cet Ouvrage’, which is presented in two parts, ‘Définition de l’Amour; distinction de deux Amours, & déclaration d’Amour de chacun des deux sexes’ and ‘Division générale ou les trois âges de l’Amour’. The introduction concludes with Letter VI, M. Méabbe à M. Ozime, under the subtitle ‘Le Temple de l’Amour. Songe’, where the author of the letter is awoken from his dream by a kiss from his his mistress Rosette. The first part, ‘L’Amour dans son enfance’, begins with an illustration of the phrase ‘Les influences de l’Amour sur un coeur’, in a letter from M. d’Ormeville to a friend, in which he describes his sixteen year old lover, the daughter of a famous actress.
There appear to have been two distinct editions published by Gaspard Menippe in 1769 under the same imprint. MMF and Gay both cite an edition with pp. xxxvi, 107 and have no mention of this edition, while OCLC locates four copies of this edition and none of the other. On the traditional assumption that the longer pagination should have priority - given the ease of resetting from text rather than manuscript - that would suggest this to be the first printing. The work was later expanded by M. de Jouy and published as a continuation of his Galerie des femmes, Amsterdam [Paris], 1802.
Gay is fairly damning of this work: ‘Scènes à tiroir. Série de lettres écrit par des personnages à noms bizarres. Livre mal fait’. The names are a little bizarre, but the text is none the worse for being peopled with lovers called ‘Mademoiselle Xiphaa’, ‘ma chère Yxi’, M. de Walfonze, Fanaol and Amévine, Vimarak, Paswau and Ravoul. The latter’s exploits include scaling the walls of a convent and obtaining the keys to the dormitory, in the true tradition of Clerico-Galante fiction.

A slim pocket volume containing a course of education prepared for the dauphin and originally published as a part of the Almanach Dauphin avec un plan d'un cours nouveau de littérature françoise, à l'usage de ce prince, 1784, by Poullin de Fleins, a Royal councillor who worked as an examiner of accounts. The Almanach Dauphin is very scarce, being known in a single copy at the BN, and we have not compared the texts, but it seems probable that this volume comprises the text removed from the almanac.
Poullin de Fleins’ curriculum is divided into the three sections: the first concerned with details that are common to all genres, equally prose and verse; the second section looking into details that distinguish poetry from oratory and other genres and the third section treating of each genre in a separate article. The first section is divided into ‘des figures, des pensées & des Images’ and it is recommended that the most time possible is spent on this section, because it is amusing, the pupil will not be required to concentrate too hard and the teacher will be able to supply a large variety of examples. The second part is divided into six lessons: what distinguishes Poetry from Eloquence; Expression, Style; Interest; Customs and Fables (the last two chapters are specified but have no content or advice). The shorter third part gives an introductory section on the different genres and has a dedicated section on Criticism. The volume concludes with ‘Hymnes de Callimaque’, comprising three extended prose accolades to Jupiter, Apollo and Delos.

An excellent unsophisticated copy of this satirical treatise on syphilis (the ‘cacomonade’), inspired by the fourth chapter of Voltaire’s Candide. The work is a facetious history of syphilis from its introduction into Europe from America through to its prevalence in France in the eighteenth century. Whimsical reflections on the philosophical causes of syphilis are included, with a discussion of its presence among the ancients and the proposition that it may have been included among the sufferings of Job. Chapter VII contains the famous ‘Statuts données à un Couvent de Filles à Avignon, par la Reine Jeanne première’, with the text printed in parallel text giving the original Provençal and French, which argued for an end to prostitution through the establishment of a house of pleasure. The Statutes were for some time quoted as sound historical sources, but, according to Gay, were the invention of a group of Avignon citizens who composed them in archaic language and sent them to a Dr Astruc (d.1766), who believed in their authenticity and printed them.
‘Jusqu'en 1825, la Cacomonade n'a été considérée que comme une facétie inoffensive, ce qu'elle est réellement; mais, à cette époque, un jugement de la police correctionnelle à Paris, l'a flétrie comme outrageant les moeurs... Nous signalerons aussi une pièce curieuse contenue dans ce petit ouvrage, ce sont les statuts donnés par la reine Jeanne à un couvent de filles à Avignon, statuts qui ont été, à diverses reprises, cités comme sérieux par les auteurs graves’ (Gay I, 446).

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’.