[KIMBER, Edward]. ~ La Vie et les aventures de Joseph Thompson. Traduit de l'anglois. ‘À Londres et se vend à Paris, Chez Charpentier...’ 1762.
3 vols, 8vo (157 × 91 mm), pp. xl, 320; x, 323; [ii], viii, 399, [1], half-title to vol. 1 only, others absent. Nineteenth-century quarter sheep, spines with black labels. A good copy. From the books of the late Martin Stone (1946-2016).
First edition in French of Life and Adventures of Joe Thompson (1750), a very popular ‘ramble’ narrative capitalising on the contemporary appetite for books of genuine voyages. Joe Thompson traverses the globe, and portions of the novel are set in America, where the author had travelled between 1742 and 1744. Of Kimber, the old DNB provides this comment: ‘Novelist and compiler, born in 1719, was son of Isaac Kimber... He gained a scanty subsistence by compiling for booksellers, and died, worn out with such drudgery, in 1769.’ Rochedieu, 177.