Moeurs et coutumes des Corses: Mémoire tiré en partie d’un…

8vo (215 × 130 mm), pp. [8], 112, plus engraved frontispiece [bound with:] De notre situation actuelle à l’égard de l’ Angleterre. [Imprimé le 30 Pluviouse, an 6e, contemporary manuscript imprint:18 February, 1798], pp. 15, [1]. The first work with inscription to half-title: ‘Don de l’auteur à la mere et à la fille, en mémoire de leur captivité commune en Corse, et du retour inespéré de tous les trois dans leur patrie. G. Feydel’.

First editions of two rare reports to the Directoire by a French journalist who lost his living after the Revolution and who joined a diplomatic mission to Constantinople ― before being captured by the English fleet and imprisoned for four years in Corsica. Moeurs et coutumes des Corses is a highly critical account of the Corsicans and their culture is inscribed to the author’s wife and daughter, who shared his island captivity. Feydel berates the insular character of his captors and the ‘maux affreux et presque désespérés de la nation corse’ whose only hope of salvation could be through lois simples et savantes qu’il tiendra de la force et de la sollicitude’. The frontispiece depicts Corsican brigands in characteristic capes and hoods. Moeurs et coutumes des Corses was reprinted [without the plate] in 1802. The second work is bracingly anti-British and describes England as ‘dernier ennemi de la France’.

Carmine Starace, Bibliografia della Corsica 8300. Outside Europe, Worldcat locates the Yale copy only of Moeurs and no copies of De notre situation.