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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 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.

The scarce first edition of a popular travel journal by the French naturalist Charles Nicolas Sigisbert Sonnini de Mononcourt, mostly remembered for his contributions to Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, 1802-1803, in particular the volume devoted to reptiles. This is an attractive set of the text volumes only of his history of Greece and Turkey. A quarto atlas volume was published with the text but is often, as here, missing.
‘L’honorable réception de mon Ouvrage sur l’Egypte a surpassé mes esperances... Ce n'était pas un travail dépourvu d'intérêt que celui d'une description de quelques parties de l'Asie et de l'ancienne Grèce, qui renfermât la connaissance de leur climat, de leur sol, de leurs productions, de leur histoire naturelle, de leur état actuel de dépérissement de leurs ressources, de la peinture des moeurs, des coutumes, du génie des peuples qui les habitent, qui offrît un rapprochement curieux entre leur situation de quelques siècles et celle de nos jours. Outre les Cyclades ou îles de l'Archipel, mes observations se porteront sur l'île de Candie, quelques parties de la Turquie dans l'Asie mineure, la Macédoine, la Morée ont été également le but de mes démarches comme seront ici l'objet de mes récits’ (pp. 5-6).

The scarce first German edition of Helen Maria Williams’ most overtly political translation and her single most controversial work. The letters of Louis XVI were obtained in good faith by Williams, who hoped to use her translation and commentary for the transmission of her own revolutionary beliefs. The enterprise turned out to be a massive error of judgement on her part as the public reaction was overwhelmingly that of sympathy for the unjustly treated king, quite the opposite to the effect she had intended. Worse than this, however, was the public and official outcry that greeted its publication. Almost immediately people began to doubt the authenticity of the letters and Williams was subject to a barrage of humiliating attacks. The first blow was that the work was confiscated by the authorities for fear of its royalist sympathies and this was followed by endless attacks, most notably a full-length vitriolic tirade by Bertrand de Moleville, A Refutation of the Libel on the Memory of the late King of France, published by Helen Maria Williams under the title of Political and Confidential Correspondence of Louis XVI translated from the original manuscript by R. C. Dallas, London, 1804. Bertrand de Moleville was unrestrained in his criticism both of the present and other works and of Williams herself, whom he famously described as 'a woman whose lips and pen distil venom'.
After years of suspicion and controversy, it transpired that the letters were indeed forgeries. Williams had purchased them from François Babié de Bercenay and Sulpice Imbert, Comte de la Platière and had herself been convinced that they were genuine. In 1822, however, Babié de Bercenay revealed in a letter that he had written the letters at the suggestion of his friend Sulpice Imbert. Williams, the innocent translator, had unwittingly been implicated in a literary hoax. Such was the humiliation she suffered after the publication that Williams retired from literary life and very little is heard of her over the next ten years.
‘Were it not for Babié’s revelation in 1820, we may never have known the actual history of Williams’s set of the Louis XVI letters. With its historical (mis)representation deriving from a non-original (in a sense) original, does Williams’s text prove an ambiguous artefact? However, the work exists as a testament to the importance of her translational oeuvre in its position in the canon as a contribution to her revolutionary communication and, in a secondary sense, as an intriguing example of the pseudotranslational subgenre’ (Paul Hague, Helen Maria Williams: the purpose and practice of translation, 1789-1827, 2015, pp. 126).
The letters in the original were given in French and English, with Williams’ commentary given only in English. In this edition, the entire text is given only in German.

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

A scarce and delightful work by the prolific Della Torre Rezzonico, writing under the pastoral pseudonym of Dorillo Dafneio. Produced at the press of Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813), this is one of numerous occasional publications, adorned with handsome engraved typographical ornaments, which he printed at the Royal Press of Duke Ferdinand of Parma and the Archduchess of Austria, Maria Amalia. Count Carlo Gastone dell Torre di Rezzonico was the darling of Roman society, a member of the Roman Accademia dell’Arcadia and a fashionable and accomplished poet, amateur musician and the organiser of legendary court parties. The philosophical, ornate verse in this collection, dedicated to Ferdinand and Maria Amalia, was typical of the Count’s activity at the court of Parma; for this work he was appointed chamberlain and colonel.

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

A 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.

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 successful German work of Catechism and moral edification, in an exquisite early nineteenth-century Czech binding. First published in 1800, it was written by the Prague-born theologian Johann Joseph Natter, a talented author of devotional handbooks which were less heavily concentrated on the Scriptures, instead focussed on encouraging charity and a peaceful state of mind. The present work features prayers and meditations for each day of the week as well as for specific religious occasions, such as Communion. As a contemporary German periodical wrote of a later edition, ‘the form and the content justify the favourable reception it has obtained everywhere’ (Allgemeine Zeitung Munchen, 1830, 19)

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

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

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.

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

An enormously successful parody of Voltaire’s Henriade, first published in Berlin in 1745 and frequently reprinted. ‘Cette facétie renferm bien des passages qui sont de notre domaine’ (Gay II, 461).

An attractive copy of this Rousseau inspired handbook for young women. First published in 1758 and a best-seller in France, Boudier de Villemert’s text discusses women's rank in society and suggests possible reforms to this. Neatly arranged in chapters by subject, it discusses the education of girls and their suitable occupations; it talks of luxury and dress, love, gallantry and marriage, condemning idleness and cosmetics and advocating maternal breast-feeding. It was published in English as The Ladies Friend, but not until 1766, which explains the English binding on this considerably earlier French edition.
‘Ce n’est ici ni une parodie, ni une imitation de l’Ami des Hommes. Cet Ouvrage a un caractère particulier, qui pourroit bien ne faire que de mauvais Copistes; mais il m’a fourni l’idée d’adresser aux Femmes quelques avis, & de discuter avec elles leurs propres intérêts. Il convenoit de prendre un ton moins haut, & d’aller, pour ainsi dire, terre à terre avec nos belles Philosophes... Je souhaite que ces idées de réforme ne leur déplaisent pas’ (Avertissement).

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

A scarce edition, possibly the first, of this jeux d'esprit by Poinsinet de Sivry. The phrase 'j'ai la berlue' translates roughly as 'I must be seeing things'; the title here serves to introduce the piercing sight of the author. Born in the middle of the night and kept in a darkened room for the first three weeks of his life, the author is free from that false sight which characterises most human beings. Therefore, in an age of telescopes, lunettes and microscopes, he alone possesses unimpeded natural sight. 'Les uns cherchent dans la lune des habitans qui n'y sont pas, les autres croient dans une mouche des beautés que le microscope y met; les Egyptiens trouvent Dieu dans un oignon; les Romains prennent l'amour-propre pour la vertu; les Zulins, le libertinage pour la liberté, la débauche pour la volupté. Le monde a-t'-il les yeux bien clarifiés?' (pp. 13-14). The dedication (signed 'XRDGISKNPMBF') is to the 'illustrious eagle', king of airy space whose vision pierces the clouds.
ESTC lists three different ‘Londres 1759’ editions. Priority has not been established, but the old adage of the greater number of pages would suggest this to be the first. Cioranescu gives priority to ESTC t200360 (pp. x, 124) which is held at the Taylorian, Texas and four copies at the BN. ESTC t230225 (pp. [vi], 160) is the scarcest of the three, with only two copies listed, at the Sorbonne and Toronto. The present edition, ESTC t128931 (pp. x, 166), is at the BL, Cambridge, Bodleian, Taylorian; two copies at the BN, four copies in Poland and Wisconsin-Madison, UCLA and Maryland only in America. The work later appeared as La Berlue, ou Nouvelles découvertes sur l’optique, Londres, 1760.

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).