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Sole edition. A colour printed curiosity, reflecting the fashionable pastime of flower painting from printed models, of which we can find no other trace in bibliographical or other records, despite its printed title by a well-known Parisian lithographic printer. The images appear to be coloured lithographs, printed successively in single colours (rather than a single impression with the stone or plate inked with all the colours at once). Aubert and compagnie’s output of regular lithographs (sometimes hand coloured) was very large in the this period (notably of caricatures by Daumier and others) but we can find no comparable examples of attempts by them at colour printing like this. While successful enough, and certainly attractive, this was perhaps a short-lived experiment by Aubert in response to developments in colour printing by xylography pioneered by George Baxter in England. A similar title Professeur des Dames was advertised by Aubert in 1848, but this consisted of 6 fashion plates in regular lithograph.

The Aubert firm was founded in 1829 by Charles Philipon and his brother-in-law Gabriel Aubert. It was first established as the Magasin des Caricatures in the Passage Véro-Dodat in 1829 but moved to the Place de la Bourse in 1841 (which helps us to date this imprint with the latter imprint)at the same time established its own lithographic printing press publishing as ‘Aubert et Cie’ as here. Gabriel Aubert died 1847

A charming example of the early nineteenth century German moveable greetings card (popularly referred to as ‘Biedermeier’ cards, after their era). The card depicts a tulip, with the text ‘Den herrlichten Blumen gleich blühe Dein Leben, Von Freude, Vergnügen und Wonne umgeben. Mein Wünshcen, mein Hoffen, mein Glück, ist allein dir’ (Your life blooms like the glorious flowers, surrounded by joy, pleasure and bliss. My wishes, my hopes, my happiness are yours alone). Pulling the tab moves opens the petals to reveal a girl with a yellow bird and the banner: ‘innigste liebe und treue guWeihen’ (dearest love and faithful dedication). The card is numbered 272.

A lovely copy with contemporary ownership inscriptions: ‘Mlle. Justine Debonnaire’. Bouilly’s popular conduct book in the form collection of short stories ran to at least three French editions within a year, and another was published in London in 1813. The 19 stories (completed with a conclusion) include ‘Les Oiseaux de madame Helvétieus’; ‘La Robe feuille-morte de madame Cottin’, ‘Les Tablettes de Florian’, ‘Les Manie des Romans’ (especially interesting and amusing, with a tilt at Ann Radcliffe and the gothic vogue), ‘Jenny la Bouquetière’ and ‘Les Dangers d’un Bon Mot’.

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’.

An April 1 satire on Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, who was accused of appropriating funds for non-naval purposes during his tenure as Lord of the Admiralty. His trial was a sensation and attracted a huge audience in Westminster Hall. In this print, when interrogated by John Bull in naval dress, he replies simply: ‘Indeed Mr Bull - I knaw nae more aboot it - than Johnny Groat o'the Highlands.’ The satire is revealing of the prevailing anti-Scottish sentiment provoked by the case.

Fores’s imprint advertises ‘Folios of Caracatures lent out for the Evening'.

Dundas was the most prominent Scottish politician of his era and instrumental in the progress of the Scottish Enlightenment. He is commemorated by one of the most prominent memorials in Edinburgh, the column and statue in St. Andrew’s Square. His commemoration is contentious — Dundas having effectively delayed the abolition of slavery for several years. BM Satires, 10381.

First edition of this encyclopedia of pre-Reformation monasteries, nunneries and abbeys in Ireland, describing some 550 foundations — the fruit of forty years research by the Dublin antiquary Archdall. The preliminaries include a list of subscribers (including numerous ecclesiastical figures and several booksellers) and a pasted slip adds several more. The plates of the ‘religious and military habits’ (including three nuns: Augustinian, Bridgitine. and Benedictine, a knight templar and a knight of St John of Jerusalem) are derived from James Ware’s Works, 1739-46. The work was also issued in London in the same year. ‘A comment in the review published in the Gentleman's Magazine—'We sincerely congratulate the sister kingdom on such a compilation' (GM, 1786)—suggests that he was keen to provide Ireland with a monastic history comparable to William Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum’ (Oxford DNB). Very scarce.

First editions, limited issues, numbers 127 and 231 of 200 and 400 copies respectively (a further 75 copies of each edition were issued on Japanese vellum and signed by publisher and artists). Separately issued companion volumes, collecting Wilde’s letters to Ross, his sometime-lover, constant companion and literary executor, written from France in the aftermath of his release from Reading Gaol. Ross faithfully guarded Wilde’s personal and literary legacy after his death, pursuing pirated editions and preserving his literary rights for Wilde’s sons. It was he who commissioned Epstein’s sculpture for the tomb at Père Lachaise and his will stipulated that his own ashes should be placed there with Oscar’s.

Ross had prepared a volume of Wilde’s post-prison letters to him before the first war and had drafted an introduction shortly before his own sudden death in 1918. These two small volumes are selections, but represent the earliest attempt at a collection of Wilde letters. They are expurgated by removing the names of Lord Alfred Douglas, Constance Wilde and a few others, but the meanings are always obvious.

‘Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit / Death how certain Death how sur[e] / Sin the wound. And Christ the cure’. ‘Emma. Preest. Her work / Tuts Hill House / July. 20. 1847 Aged /12. Years. Old’.

Emma Preest is possibly the Emma born on the 8th June 1835 at Bream Eaves, Gloucestershire and baptised in the Wesleyan chapel at Monmouth — certainly that would accord with her given age (12) in 1847 when she made this sampler. The identity of Tuts Hill house is not straightforward, there having been two houses so named in the vicinity of Tidenham, Chepstow. We can find no pictorial evidence of either of them as a three-storey, four bay house as in Emma’s depiction, and no Preest family associated with either. But if one accepts the likelihood of Emma being Gloucestershire born, both houses would have been some ten miles from her birthplace, suggesting the possibility she entered service at one of them at the age of 12 (quite possible) and that this may have been an ‘apprentice’ piece. Young girls were taught this kind of sewing not so much as a primer in reading (still less writing) as in household needleork and linen labelling.

The verse is a variation of a popular gravestone epitaph: ‘Life is uncertain, death is sure, Sin the wound, and Christ the cure. If we have correctly identified Emma Preest, she married in 1854, had several children and emigrated with her family after 1870 and died in 1915 at Shawnee, Perry County, Ohio, USA, aged 80.

Number 2 of 15 copies.

Number 2 of 15 copies with the additional suite on chine.

Number 2 of 11 copies.

A treatise onclassical Latin epitaphs by an Italian Jesuit. Its chapters include a key to common abbreviations (HSE: Hic sepultus est, here is buried; STTL: Sit Tibi Terra Levis, May the earth rest lightly upon you; HFC: heres faciendum curavit, their heir had [the tombstone] made, etc) and there follow a series of accounts of epitaphs for particular contexts: parents, children, men, women, mothers, spouses and even animals. Another considers satirical epitaphs: ‘salsis et ridiculis’. Of Proficio we have been unable to discover anything more; Tractatus de Epitaphiis was apparently not published in print but another manuscript copy is held by the Biblioteca nazionale Braidense in Milan (dateable to before 1625).

Our copy is almost certainly the Baldassare Boncampagni copy (item 454 in his 1892 catalogue, and 409 in the 1862 edition), described as ‘legato in pergamena ornata di dorature e stemma d. C. de G’. That catalogue gives 55 leaves (rather than 66) an error found also in the old pencil manuscript foliation of the last leaf of the manuscript marked ‘55’ recte 66, but the dimensions given in the catalogue also correspond precisely. Prince Baldassarre Boncompagni-Ludovisi (10 May 1821 – 13 April 1894), was an Italian historian of mathematics and aristocrat. His library contained some 650 manuscripts and 20,000 printed works and was sold in Rome in 1898. Parts of the manuscript collection are now held by the Universitetsbibliotek (Stockholm), Trinity College Library (Dublin), Cornell, as well as the Vatican library, Columbia (NY) and the Biblioteca Comunale in Treviso. Catalogo di manoscritti ora posseduti da D. Baldassare Boncompagni, Rome 1892.

First edition in French of any part of Eden’s The State of the Poor. Or, an History of the Labouring Classes in England (1797) one of the classic works in the history of economics and the foundation of the discipline of sociology. This extensive but partial translation formed numbers 21 and 24 of the rare Recueil de Mémoires sur les étabissemens d’humanité, continuously paginated across the two volumes. The editors’ preface notes the timeliness of such a translation at a time of revolutionary upheaval when no system of social security for the poor existed in France. Issued anonymously the translation is attributed to A.-C. Duquesnoy by Rochedieu. It precedes the edition translated by La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt of 1800 and is very rare. Rochedieu, Bibliography of Translations of English Works 1700-1800, 95. Cf. Printing and the Mind of Man, 249 (the English edition). Besides the British library copy (incomplete, apparently the first volume only), Worldcat locates no other copies outside continental Europe.

First edition, one of 55 copies of a unique production, with the French text of the Song of Songs entirely in manuscript and 30 superb eroticised plates by Jean-François Favre. The entire edition was evidently produced over several years — the Neuchatel copy (which also contains a duplicated explanation not present in our copy) is dated 1954, where ours is 1956. Swiss artist Favre was born in 1940, studied in Paris and spent several years in Polynesia and Guyana. His figures certainly owe something to Gaugin. Worldcat locates a 2 copies (Neuchatel Bibliotheque publique and an unspecified location).

First edition, one of 500 copies, this one inscribed by Benvenuti to prominent French critic Robert de Sizeranne. A rare little treatise on the architectural ideas of painter, engraver and architect Benvenuti. He had been infuenced by Llewelyn Lloyd, Giovanni Fattori and Telemaco Signorini and pioneered a type of Divisionism as a painter. His architecture fused symbolism, art nouveau and an emergent geometric style approaching art deco. Worldcat lists the Stanford copy only in the US.

First edition. Ellen, one of Lorrain’s last substantial works tells the story of the final tragic months of a young English aristocrat, Ellen Horneby, sent to the Riviera with her mother to recuperate from a mysterious illness. A love triangle ensues, in which Ellen is cruelly misunderstood. She presents the manuscript of an allegorical tale she has written to one of her suitors (her cousin) who fails to understand it and dismisses her with a kiss on the forehead. Devastated, Ellen throws herself to her death from her balcony. It is one of Lorrain’s least outlandish and most stylish creations, surely worthy of revival.

Appended to the edition are three further short stories: Trains de Luxe, Monte-Carlo, Choses de Là-Bas et La Conquête de Paris

First edition of this diminutive near-miniature tribute to Queen Victoria ‘Dedicated to Children in all Places of Her Imperial Majesty’s Dominions’.

A collection of manuscript and watercolour drawings, being maquettes for an apparently unpublished game, including portion of a folding game mat on linen, a sheet of counters (uncut) on parchment, numerous drawings and sketches on paper and tracing paper(some coloured) as trials for the game positions, several sheets of manuscript instructions in French and Spanish. The game seems to have been a type of lotto, with the parchment counters corresponding to game squares which were to be placed in a spherical wooden ‘bank’ for shuffling before being drawn by the players.

Its origin in a French household at Saint Sébastien is indicated by the use of numerous scraps of waste paper from the French Consul’s office their. It was perhaps, therefore made by a member of his own family. The sketches are highly accomplished and carefully rendered often in several preliminary sketches before reduction in goauche to the size of the parchment game counters.

First edition of this wonderful compendium of juvenile songs in honour of the tradition English Twelfth Night iced plum cake, with each song sung by a different character, including King, Queen, Harlequin and Punch. The title vignette is typically immense, decorated with ribbons and swags and miniature figures of the characters, laid on a table ready to be cut. Though undated The Twelfth Cake was reviewed in the January Monthly Magazine of 1798, so was probably issued before Christmas, i.e. in 1797.

‘Although his earliest publications were of solo songs, Spofforth’s importance as a composer is based on the numerous glees (about seventy-five in number) that he published from 1796, many of which also appeared in anthologies.... Spofforth composed many songs and duets and left three books of nursery-rhyme settings, but no instrumental or sacred music.

Spofforth was chorus master at Covent Garden for a time, and wrote various songs and glees for productions there, but turned down an invitation to succeed William Shield as musical director in 1797. He also served as organist at Fitzroy Chapel and later at Eltham parish church, and was active as a teacher’ (Oxford DNB). Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books, II, 661-2 (suggesting c. 1800 as the date of publication). Worldcat lists copies at BL (erroneously dated 1807), Cambridge (erroneously dated 1778-1787, which is unlikely), Yale, Alexander Turnbull Library (NZ), Toronto (the Osborne copy), Princeton

First edition in French of Nicholas Nickleby (1839) translated with an introduction by Émile de La Bédollierre. The four-and-a-half page Preface describes Dickens’s success in England and the undoubted success of Nickleby ‘un panorama de toutes les classes de la société anglaise, une critique fine et piquante de touts les ridicules, une vaste composition à la manière de Gil Blas, où mille personnages divers se meuvent et posent devant le lecteur’. It also explains, for a French audience, the character of schoolmaster Squeers as the representative of an entire class, not just himself.

The copy retains the adverts (16 pages at the end of volume 3) giving a valuable context, with other English works from Scott and Marryat. It is also interesting as a ‘cabinet de lecture’ copy, from a public reading room in the rue Pigal[le], Paris, run by a M. Laporte, according to the contemporary pencil additions to the printed labels pasted over the imprints in each volume. The library wrappers are probably pasted over at least some of the original yellow wrappers. Rare: Worldcat locates copies at the British Library and Vassar College only. There is also a copy in the Bibliothèque nationale.