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First edition of this very rare and notorious catalogue for the sale of the library of the comte de Fortsas in Mons, 1840. In that year, booksellers, librarians and collectors were surprised to receive copies of a sale catalogue for a remarkable library, containing just 52 books, each purporting to be a work or edition existing in a single copy only. The catalogue introduction explains that the comte collected only these otherwise unrecorded books and that if he subsequently found reference to any in bibliographies and catalogues he would deaccession them by selling, donation or even destruction. There are also helpful annotations to some lots from the comte’s own notes and some condition statements.

Converging on the small town of Binche on August 10th, hopeful bidders were surprised to find the notary’s office in which the sale was to be held did not actually exist and later, to learn that there was no library of unique books, and no comte de Fortsas. The hoax had been perpetrated by Renier Hubert Ghislain Chalon, an antiquarian who enjoyed playing elaborate pranks on intellectuals. This copy also contains the exceptionally rare ‘Avis’ sheet (officially stamped) bound at the end - the notice issued by Chalon stating that the sale was cancelled and that the books had been acquired en bloc by the public library of the town of Binche.

132 copies only of the catalogue were printed, and 73 copies of the Avis. It was reprinted very quickly, but the first edition is very rare and is recognised by the word ‘rue’ as the first word of the eighth line on the title (the earliest reprint has that word at the end of the line above): W. Klinefelter, The Fortsas Bibliohoax (1941)

A unique artist’s book. Diane de Bournazel (b. 1956) creates books as ‘poems without words’ in her unique pen, ink and gouache style, filling each page with mazes of vegetation, mysterious borders, structures and figures, opening windows within pages allowing us to see behind and beyond them, suggesting a series of alternative worlds and narratives. Drawing on the universals of the cosmos, the natural world, of childhood and human relationships each of her books invite careful ‘reading’ and multiple interpretations. Collectors have found the books to speak for themselves, and the artist writes of her work simply as:

‘Poésie sans paroles.
Il s’agit bien de ça.
Mettre en images le monde et l’arrière monde,
Comme un poète mais sans mot dire’.

Examples of the Regency fashion for intricate paper cutting. Each roundel contains figures of angels, of John the Baptist holding a cross, and birds among the exquisitely cut foliage and swags. At the centres are small watercolour scenes, one of Abraham and Isaac, the other of Moses and the burning bush. The initials ‘MWM’ may denote a recipient, or perhaps the object of a memorial. The black backgrounds and symbols of resurrection suggest these are memorial pictures.

First edition of this graphic propaganda piece encouraging the projected invasion of Britain by Napoleon’s Revolutionary government. By pushing the definition of invasion and by including a long series of medieval coastal raids on Southern England, General Girardin can list 45 ‘invasions’ from 1066 to the present, with 41 being successful.

First edition, preserved in its contemporary wrapper. A panegyric given on the Feast of Saint Louis, patron saint of France in the church, to members of the Académies royales in the church of the Oratoire. Worldcat: Newberry and Michigan only outside France.

First edition, in a fine contemporary wrapper. The Abbé Armand de Rohan-Ventadour was elected to the Academy in December 1741.

First edition. A panegyric addressed to Marie Adélaïde, ‘Madame’ (1732-1800, the fourth of Louis XV’s eight daughters) on the subject of her patron, Saint Adelaide of Burgundy, Holy Roman Empress by marriage to the tenth-century Emperor Otto the Great. The author, Abbé Petity, was a court cleric and had been royal predicateur to Adélaïde’s mother, Marie Leszczyńska. Worldcat: University of Aberdeen only outside France.

First edition. A homage to Rousseau in the form of a series of imaginary visits to his monument on the Isle des Peupliers in the gardens of Ermenonville which had been constructed by the philosopher’s patron, the Marquis de Girardin. Lepetit’s adverts on 6 pages at the end are of interest and include several translations from gothic novels in English (Anne Radcliffe, Eléonor de Rosalba, ou le Confessionnal des Pénitens Noirs; Miss Bennett, Rosa, ou la Fille Mendiante and Sophie Lee, Le Soutterrain, ou Matilde). Worldcat: Cambridge, Dumbarton Oaks, Illinois and Princeton only outside continental Europe.

First edition in French of An authentic Account of Forgeries and Frauds of various kinds, committed by Charles Price, otherwise Patch or (alternatively) Memoirs of a Social Monster (1786), a sensational work which had run to six English editions within a year. Price, a highly successful forger of banknotes and a confidence trickster, notorious for engraving his own very plausible banknotes printed on paper of his own manufacture complete with watermarks, became something of a celebrity in eighteenth century London. He took his own life in Bridewell in 1786 and was the subject of numerous popular memoirs and ballads. Rochedieu, p. 368. Worldcat: Cambridge, Leeds, University of London, V & A, Cornell, UCLA and Yale outside continental Europe. Rochedieu, p. 368.

First published in 1778, this important Lakeland guide had reached no less than 11 editions by 1821. Its picturesque vision was hugely influential and can be credited, at least in part, with establishing the Romantics’ interest in the Lakes. ‘Drawing freely on the work of previous writers, notably Thomas Gray, Thomas Pennant, and John Brown, and very much reflecting the contemporary interest in what West himself calls ‘landscape studies’, the Guide is nevertheless a work of considerable individuality, displaying a real sensitivity to the visual qualities of the district. The recommended 'stations' for viewing the landscape were a significant innovation. The author's antiquarian passion and his curiosity about industrial activities are clearly evident. The Guide undoubtedly did much to popularize the district (Oxford DNB).

A diminutive juvenile edition, one of three by Wenman (1781, 1783, 1787, all rare). First published in 1762, The Shipwreck proved extremely popular and was thereafter expanded and republished several times. Falconer, himself a seaman, had died at sea in 1769. ESTC: BL, Senate House and Southwestern University.

First published anonymously in May 1744, Moore’s Fables for the Female Sex had at least seventeen other editions in the eighteenth century, four of which were American; it was translated into French in 1764 and German in 1772. Three of the fables are by Henry Brooke. Hayman’s illustrations incorporate numerous elements from Francis Barlow’s sequence of the previous century; his original drawings of 1744 are preserved in the Rothschild collections at Waddesdon. Foxon, M428.

The Supernatural Philosopher is a reissue of The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell (1720) with the addition of ‘Verses to Mr. Campbell. On the History of his Life and Adventures’ and ‘A remarkable passage of an apparition. 1665’.
The author evidently lodged for a while in the same London house as the Scots-born soothsayer Duncan Campbell (d. 1730), who was a well-known figure in the city. Deaf and mute, he was probably educated at Glasgow using the finger system devised by John Wallis in the seventeenth century. The History of the Life was persistently attributed until relatively recently to Defoe even though it was reissued here under Bond’s name.

The ‘Genii of Caricature’ haul in a net full of subjects (portraits, bon mots, manners, oddities, jokes etc) to Tegg’s Apollo Library, which advertises ‘The Largest Assortment of Caricatures in the World’, while the proprietor takes a pot shot at folly flying overhead. The caption is from Pope: ‘Eye Natures walks, shoot Folly as it flies, and catch the manners living as they rise’ (Essay on Man). The Apollo Library was at 111 Cheapside, at the corner of Honey Lane opposite St Mary-Le-Bow church. A famous caricature print, the tailpiece from The Caricature Magazine, vol. 3, published by Thomas Tegg, London, 1808–09, and the separate plate reissued several times to c. 1821.

A satire on Charles James Fox and William Pitt the Younger and on the prolonged negotiations for a coalition (’junction’) between their parties. BM Satires 10370; Grego, Rowlandson the caricaturist, 49.

A unusual collection of examples of typography and printing techniques, which would be of use in the classroom as non-digital but portable samples of letterpress and intaglio printing, woodcut, engraving, etching, lithography, wood engraving and their various combinations. All have been cut from (hopefully) defective original sources and include full pages (including numerous title-pages) and cut examples of initials (woodcut, metalcut, wood engraved, etc) and ornaments (intaglio and letterpress). Some of the sheets bear pencil notes as to approximate date and city, most being French, with some English and German. A good proportion of the samples are early, with a concentration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but with significant sixteenth century examples, including decorative title-pages and initials.

First separate edition of Seguin’s tables of squares and cubes designed for architects and for other practical purposes. The tables were originally issued as an appendix to his Manuel d’architecture (1786) Worldcat: Cornell and Brigham Young only.

First separate edition, also issued simultaneously as a suite to the author’s Question de longitude sur mer (1833), but here issued alone with its own title-page and errata leaf forming a wrapper. The final 4 leaves are adverts for the author’s controversial mechanical planispheres, one of which is illustrated in the very large folding plate.

Demonville had been a printer (and the son of a printer to the Académie française) but diversified as a maker of globes scientific instruments after losing his licence to print in Paris. In the year of publication, he acquired notoriety as an astronomical crank who denied the astronomy of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Halley and Herschel. His planispehere demonstrates his alternative system: the earth, the sun and the moon are the only astronomical bodies; the earth does not rotate (it merely nods a little over the course of a year); the moon is 250 leagues from the earth and the sun, just 1500; the stars are affixed to the crystalline sphere; and the planets have no corporeal existence. Demonville hawked his system (with both books and his instruments) around Paris and London, even obtaining an audience with William III, who asked the Royal Society for their opinion. With his longitude pamphlets he sought to obtain prizes from the Societies of Paris and London but ideas were roundly dismissed, and Demonville pilloried in the press. Both issues rare.

First separate edition, presentation copy, reprinted from the Annali degli Medicina, January/Febraury 1833. The second cholera pandemic of the 1830s hit France harder than most other European countries. Spreading from the Far East via Russia, it appeared in Western Europe in 1831. In Paris it is estimated that 20,000 died (from a population of 650,000) with about 100,000 deaths across France. Caffarelli, a Piedmontese corresponding member of the Paris Société des Sciences Physiques, Chimiques et Arts industriels here considers the symptoms and progress of the disease, its treatment (both internal an external) according to contemporary methods. National Library of Medicine only in Worldcat. No copies located in French or British libraries.

First edition of this defence of Rousseau by a Genevan republican patriot, who includes numerous long extracts from Rousseau’s letters, which appear to have been otherwise unpublished. ESTC: Göttingen, Polish Academy of Sciences Library, Wisconsin and Western Michigan University only (there is also a copy at Cambridge). Conlon 548.