Les Ecosseuses: ou Les Oeufs de Pasques. by VADÉ, Jean-Joseph;…

Les Ecosseuses: ou Les Oeufs de Pasques. by VADÉ, Jean-Joseph; Anne-Claude-Philippe comte de CAYLUS; Jeanne Baptiste d’Albert de Luynes, comtesse de VERRUE. < >
  • Another image of Les Ecosseuses: ou Les Oeufs de Pasques. by VADÉ, Jean-Joseph; Anne-Claude-Philippe comte de CAYLUS; Jeanne Baptiste d’Albert de Luynes, comtesse de VERRUE.
  • Another image of Les Ecosseuses: ou Les Oeufs de Pasques. by VADÉ, Jean-Joseph; Anne-Claude-Philippe comte de CAYLUS; Jeanne Baptiste d’Albert de Luynes, comtesse de VERRUE.
  • Another image of Les Ecosseuses: ou Les Oeufs de Pasques. by VADÉ, Jean-Joseph; Anne-Claude-Philippe comte de CAYLUS; Jeanne Baptiste d’Albert de Luynes, comtesse de VERRUE.

~ Les Ecosseuses: ou Les Oeufs de Pasques. ‘Troyes’ [but Paris]: chez la Veuve Oudoy, 1745.

8vo (148 × 88 mm), pp. [4], 172, woodcut frontispiece printed in bistre with letterpress in black and additional title partly printed in bistre, with woodcut device of two crossed pea-pods, regular title in black (dated 1739). One stain affecting upper forecorner of 5 leaves, full turquoise morocco, gilt, gilt edges c. 1900. Upper joint starting but secure. A very copy.

First edition with the delightful woodcut frontispiece of two pea shellers, evidently cut by the comte de Caylus himself after a drawing and engraving by Edme Bouchardon. The imprint of widow Oudoy at Troyes is considered false, and the book was probably printed in Paris. The combination of frontispiece and imprint serves to give the work a popular character (Troyes being a well-known centre of chapbook production), appropriate for a collection composed in the genre poissard reproducing contemporary street language — a collection of tales and anecdotes purporting to be told by six women (’commeres’) in a butcher’s shop. The authorship is composite, with contributions from populist Vadé and the comte de Caylus and comtesse de Verrue, members of a Parisian salon, the ‘Société du Bout-du-Banc,around the hostess Jeanne-Françoise Quinault. An edition had previously appeared in 1739, with a different pagination and without the woodcut and extra title.

The woodcut reproduces one of Bouchardon’s wonderful series of Cris de Paris series of drawings, immortalising the ordinary people of Paris in age where so many illustrations were purely aristocratic. It is signed with initials ‘B’ and ‘C’ on either side, for Bouchardon and Caylus respectively. Barbier, 1, 359, 4695; cf. Gay II. p. 182 (Etrennes de la Saint-Jean, the collection in which it was also included).

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