L’Etat de servitude ou la Misère des domestiques. by (CHAPBOOK).

8vo (160 × 115 mm), pp. 16. Title fleuron. Somewhat browned and spotted. Uncut and partially unopened, preserved in old marbled wrappers, title reinforced at gutter. A fair copy.

A lament in some five hundred lines of verse on the miseries of the footman and servant’s profession. This humble production, printed on very indifferent paper, merits a long entry in Nisard’s Histoire des livres populaires ou De la littérature du colportage (1852, vol. I, pp. 439-443) concluding: ‘Le papier, l’impression, les fautes dont il fourmille, tout lui donne des droits à être qualifié de rossignol, et à être, comme tel, vénéré des bibliomanes’ (’The paper, the printing, the errors with which it abounds, all qualify it to be called a nightingale, and to be, as such, revered by bibliophiles’).