La Dot de Suzette, ou, Histoire de Mme. de Senneterre.…

12mo (162 × 88 mm), pp. [4], xii, 233, [1], complete with half-title, plus engraved frontispiece. Occasional spots and stains, 2 leaves (pp. 131-134) loose. Early quarter calf, gilt panelled spine, lettered direct. Spine quite faded, but a good copy.

First edition of one of the bestsellers of the Directoire-era, a clandestine novel of contemporary morality, told by a female narrator. Fiévée is an interesting figure. A journalist, novelist and civil servant, his Royalist sympathies forced him into hiding in the 1790s. Freed by Napoleon, he became an intelligence agent under the Empire and was ennobled. He lived in an openly gay relationship with Théodore Leclercq until his death and the two men share the same grave at Père Lachaise. Martin, Mylne & Frautschi, Bibliographie du genre romanesque français, 1751-1800, 98.41.