create pdf catalogue:
women
Women
Mayer’s massive collection contains the work of over 40 authors and a valuable bibliographical survey of at least 100 others. It includes tales by Madame d’Aulnoy, Pierre-François Godard de Beauchamps, Charles Duclos, Antoine Hamilton, Antoine Galland, Mademoiselle de La Force, Mademoiselle Leprince de Beaumont, Madame Levesque, Mademoiselle Lheritier, Madame de Lintot, Mademoiselle de Lubert, le chevalier de Mailly, Madame de Murat, Charles Perrault and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As Marina Warner has pointed out, within this corpus of tales of magic and enchantment, female authors outnumber male authors two-to-one (From the Beast to the Blonde, 1994). Mayer established this canon of wonder tales at the very moment when they were most threatened as a literary form. By 1789, the aristocratic salons which had given birth to this genre, were no longer to be taken for granted and tales of this type almost ceased to be published in France. Le cabinet des fées was Mayer’s attempt to preserve for posterity this remarkable corpus of popular literature. This is also an important illustrated book, with its 120 plates engraved by Pierre-Clément Marillier (1740-1808). These plates are especially interesting for their representation of oriental themes and characters, reflecting the very strong bias within the collection (and within this genre of French literature as a whole) for texts like Galland’s translation of Mille et une nuits set in the Near- and Far East. Marillier’s illustrations certainly reinforce the tendency to depict eastern culture as both alluring but dangerous and, incidentally, furnish the first properly illustrated version of Mille et une nuits (Hensher, ‘Engraving Difference: the representation of the Oriental Other in Marillier’s illustrations to the Mille et une nuits and other contes orientaux in Le Cabinet des fées (1785-89)’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 31, September 2008). see full details...
Intended as the first of a projected series of works with the general title Idées singulières, Le Pornographe is an important early manifesto for the regulation of prostitution. It also holds a significant place in the historical etymology of pornography: meaning literally ‘one who writes about prostitutes’, being the first modern coinage of a word used by the ancient Greeks. Restif issued the work anonymously, presenting it with a preface claiming that the idea was not a French invention at all but one found in the manuscript of an Englishman by the name of Lewis Moore. In a series of letters, the work presents an anatomy of prostitution, noting its inevitability in cities such as Paris and its dangers to public health and morality. Most interestingly, it then outlines a system of regulations, with well-managed maisons publiques, in which prostitutes are required to stay, where they are protected and cared for and where customers are strictly controlled. A major pre-occupation is the contemporary anxiety over the (wrongly) perceived decline in population, a decline to which prostitution was seen to have contributed. Restif proposes that pregnant prostitutes be required to fulfil their pregnancies and that their children should be brought up and educated within the maisons publiques and to take up alternative professions when of age. This early work by Restif encapsulates both his social realism his utopian aspirations, both of which became major aspects of his later novels. The imprint is false and the work was published in Paris by Delalain, who sold the author’s works, but who deleted his own name from the imprint after the first impression. The two issues are identical save for the title-page. see full details...
It had first appeared as a preface to Les crimes de l’amour (1799) and sought to trace the origins and development of the modern or psychological novel from classical literature to the eighteenth-century works of Rousseau, Voltaire, De Graffigny, Marivaux and Crébillon fils and in de Sade’s own Aline et Valcourt. De Sade identifies Richardson and Fielding as the masters of the genre (‘C’est Richardson, c’est Fielding qui nous ont appris que l’étude profonde du coeur de l’homme, véritable dédale de la nature, peut seul inspirer le romancier...’) and he prefers Lewis to Radcliffe among gothic novelists. He also denies his authorship of Justine, attributed to him by contemporaries, writing ‘jamais je n’ai fait de tels ouvrages, et je n’en ferai sûrement jamais.’ Uzanne adds a bio-bibliographical preface, the latter portion providing a checklist of de Sade’s works and a critical overview of nineteenth-century studies. see full details...
![LOUVET DE COUVRAY, [Jean-Baptiste].](/photos/429/main/429.jpg "LOUVET DE COUVRAY, [Jean-Baptiste].")
![COTTIN, [Sophie Ristaud.]](/photos/336/main/336.jpg "COTTIN, [Sophie Ristaud.]")
![[GRANT, Anne.]](/photos/7/main/7.jpg "[GRANT, Anne.]")
![[AULNOY, Madame d’.]](/photos/24/main/24.jpg "[AULNOY, Madame d’.]")
![[MOLÉ, Guillaume François Roger.]](/photos/317/main/317.jpg "[MOLÉ, Guillaume François Roger.]")
![[FENN, Ellenor]. [Mrs.] LOVECHILD.](/photos/160/main/160.jpg "[FENN, Ellenor]. [Mrs.] LOVECHILD.")
![[LONGUE, Louis Pierre de.]](/photos/256/main/256.jpg "[LONGUE, Louis Pierre de.]")
![[VOLTAIRE, François-Marie Arouet de.]](/photos/433/main/433.jpg "[VOLTAIRE, François-Marie Arouet de.]")
![[DAMOURS, Louis.]](/photos/434/main/434.jpg "[DAMOURS, Louis.]")
![[ERARD, Claude.]](/photos/328/main/328.jpg "[ERARD, Claude.]")
![[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.] Mr. de la PLACE.](/photos/295/main/295.jpg "[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.] Mr. de la PLACE.")
![FREYDIER, M[onsieur].](/photos/382/main/382.jpg "FREYDIER, M[onsieur].")
![[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.]](/photos/121/main/121.jpg "[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.]")
