(LESLEY, Jenny, ‘the Girl lynx’). ~ Histoire véritable et merveilleuse d’une jeune Angloise, précédée de quelques circonstances concernant l’enfant hydroscope, & de beaucoup d'autres traits & phénomenes les plus singuliers dans ce genre. Suivie d’un parallele rapports que ces phénomenes paroissent avoir entr’eux, de quelques vues patriotiques à ce sujet, & d'une maniere, rien moins que physique, d’envisager ces miracles de la Nature. Ouvrage soumis aux lumieres des savans naturalistes, physiologistes, chymistes, à celles des Sociétés & Académies des Sciences; enfin aux observations des curieux & amateurs d’Histoire Naturelle. Avec les autorités & piéces justificatives. Paris: Imprimé à Physicopolis & se trouve à Paris Chez Lottin le jeune, Librarie rue S. Jacques, vis-à-vis la rue de la Parcheminerie, 1772.
12mo (162 × 95 mm), pp. viii, 88, complete with half-title and 4 pp. adverts. Leaf A3 with slight loss to blank foremargin (probably from careless opening). Early quarter calf, spine ruled in gilt, red morocco label. Lower panel of spine sometime neatly repaired, joints just cracked but secure. Modern bookplate of bibliographer Guy Bechtel (b. 1931, ‘Le bibliophobe Bechtel’). A very good copy.
First edition of this satirical consideration of ‘interior vision’, divination and the cases of the French boy who could divine water and British girl who could see through solids, including into the human body and mind. The ‘jeune Angloise’ was Jenny Lesley, of the isle of Torry (off the north coast of Ireland), the 19-year old ‘Girl lynx’ who could see into the human body, head and mind. Her powers are described in a purported letter from a’ Lord Norton’ which is given in both French and English, the latter as ‘Original of My Lord Norton's letter’ (pp. 75-81). The book is a spoof on pseudoscience, and the characters fictitious, and plays on the rivalry between French and English scientists in this era. The author suggests a marriage of the French boy and English girl.
‘Inspired by Maupertuis’s speculations about cross-breeding, [the author] goes on to suggest that the Royal Society and the Paris Academy of Sciences really ought to preside over (and pay the expenses of) the marriage and breeding of this girl, in order to produce more such gifted lynx-people. “There is no need to mention what advantages would result from a lynx race, for the good of humanity; what light [lumières], what vision, what insight, these living telescopes, born in the sanctuary and under the auspices of physics, could communicate to savants, the authors and the cause of their existence!”44 He went on to calculate how long it would take for the trait to multiply in subsequent generations, and how useful these people, bred in academies would be for police work, for uncovering court intrigues, and so on’ (Mary Terrall, ‘Speculation and Experiment in Enlightenment Life Sciences’, A Cultural History of Heredity I:17th and 18th Centuries, 2002, p. 39.
Outside continental Europe, Worldcat lists copies at University of London (Harry Price collection), McGill and McMaster universities. There is also a copy at Trinity College Cambridge.