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A rare miniature gospel book. Not found in the usual bibliographies or databases.

First edition of this survey of the fundamental changes made to female education in France between 1879 and 1887, France fundamentally reformed female education, moving from Catholic-dominated, basic instruction to a state-run, secular, and more academic system. Legislation such as the 1880 so-called Camille Sée law, established the first public secondary schools for girls (lycées) to produce educated ‘republican mothers,’ focusing on academic study rather than just needlework. The author was deputy director of the French ministry of public education. He dedicates the book to Camille Sée.

First edition of this rare practical programme for female secondary education. The so-called Duruy Reforms of 1865 instituted a new programme of secondary instruction geared towards practical careers in business and administration. While they also reformed primary education for girls, they did little for their secondary education, as noted in the foreword here by Madame Charles Sauvestre, instutrice. She concludes that the private initiatives are the only way of circumventing this, and the Guide pratique pour les écoles professionnelles de jeunes filles is a brief but complete guide to the practicalities and particularities of secondary schools for girls, starting with budget estimates for their foundation and maintenance. Much of detail is provided by the tables, which include three-year curricula with breakdowns of the necessary subjects, encompassing, letters, sciences, arts, and practical studies. ‘Letters’ comprise literacy in French and other living languages (not Latin), as well as history, geography, cosmography, domestic economy and ethics (religion is absent). ‘Sciences’ include mathematics (especially mental and commercial arithmetic), accounting, botany, zoology and mineralogy. ‘Arts’ include writing, drawing, geometry, ornament, industrial drawing, engraving, painting on porcelain and singing (formal music and panel painting notably absent). ‘Practical studies’ include couture (dressmaking), embroidery, tapestry, artificial flowers, lacemaking and paper crafts. Each of these subjects is broken down further into specific lessons with their place in a termly and weekly timetable divided into hours. A final chapters gives recommendations for the organisation of a library and a list of recommended books and authors. WorldCat: Library of Congress only outside Europe.

First edition, presentation copy, arguing for the proper provision of university education for women. The author surveys recent developments around the world, notably in the United States, where the women’s education movement has been most marked (and citing the Philadelphia medical school and the University of Michigan as examples) and in Great Britain (citing University College, London, Girton and Somerville Colleges at Cambridge and Oxford respectively). WorldCat locates a single copy: Università Bocconi, Milan.

First edition of one of the celebrated French clairvoyant’s earliest and rarest works, in which she reported an angelic appearance at Louis XVI’s tomb and revealed the contents of a tablet of prophecies for the era of the Restoration of the French monarchy. Like Le Normand’s later works it is couched in terms of dreams, predictions and angelic interventions. Marie-Anne Le Normand (1772–1843) was a celebrated (but also notorious) clairvoyant. Famed throughout Europe for her exclusive clientele, she popularised cartomancy and spawned an enormous wave of imitators. At the height of her career she claimed to have advised the likes of Robespierre, Talleyrand, Metternich, the Empress Josephine and the Russian Emperor Alexander; others argued that the whole thing was a sham, and she was frequently arrested, spending several weeks in prison. She is perhaps best remembered today for the cartomancy tarot decks named after her (’Lenormand cards’).
Le Normand was not only successful as a clairvoyant, but as a businesswoman, publisher and bookseller, with most of her works carrying her own imprint (as here) and sold at her shop in the rue de Tournon. At this early date she evidently operated her own press, with the half-title giving an address in nearby rue de Seine. Later works were generally printed for her by other presses. Caillet 6515. WorldCat: British Library only. While there are several copies in French libraries it is apparently absent from the Bibliothèque nationale. Arbour, Dictionnaire des femmes libraires en France, p. 343.

First edition of Le Norman’s predictions issued in the wake of the July Revolution of 1830 and the restoration of the monarchy under Louis Philippe, events welcomed by Le Normand, who saw the ghost of Louis XVI as her protector. Like her previous collections, it consists of accounts of her ‘visions intuitives’ and ‘Révélations politiques, symboliques, prophètiques, somnambulismes etc’. Throughout the nineteenth century, writers and pamphleteers repeated that tale of the ‘Little Red Man’ purported to be from an old folk tale dating back to the creation of the Tuileries Palace (1564) in which Le Petit Homme Rouge (a genie, or ghost) had appeared to the kings and queens living in the palace on the eve of great events, from Catherine de Medici to Napoleon. Here Le Normand uses him to recount the counsel given to Napoleon at Malmaison in 1793, that France could never be a democracy. Chapter five is set at the Scottish royal palace of Holyrood where the deposed Charles X had lived between 1796-1803
The title verso has an advert for eleven works hitherto published and still marketed by Le Normand at her shop in rue de Torunon, all priced, together with three fothcoming works ‘sous presse’ and a collected works in 10 volumes. Caillet 6514 (’Ouvrage peu commun’).

A spectacular facsimile edition of one of the most celebrated books of hours of the fifteenth century, the illumination by Jean Bourdichon reproduced in superb chromolithography by Léon Curmer. This copy additionally contains twelve sumptuous illuminated calendar borders as copied in gouache, watercolour and gold by Curmer’s anonymous copyist, identifiable through his signatures in this copy as the master facsimilist, Christian Schultz (1817-1883). His twelve superb illuminations show the occupations of the twelve months, including winter fireside dining, pruning, a garden, reaping, harvesting, threshing, grape treading, ploughing and sowing, feeding hogs and killing swine.
This was one of Curmer’s most ambitious publications, requiring painstaking copying from the original manuscript kept in the French Bibliothèque nationale. His methods are not well understood, but each leaf was first copied in gouache by skilled facsimilists who were almost never credited in the final publication. This copy, with the twelve calendar miniatures in gouache allows us to identify Christian Schultz as at least one (if not the only) copyist for this project, with several bearing his minute signature, not included in the final corresponding chromolithograph. He is perhaps better known for his subsequent work for the British Arundel Society, copying Flemish masterpieces such as the Ghent Altarpiece for their important and popular facsimiles. He had been born in Kassel in 1817, was trained in Germany as a draughtsman and studied lithography in Munich (Ledger, A Study of the Arundel Society 1848-1897, Oxford DPhil, 1978) In his work for the Arundel Society he made his copies by painting over photographic images of the work, and it is interesting to speculate how he created the Anne of Brittany facsimiles. Certainly, the whole book had been photographed (and reproduced in the text volume) but his finished miniatures are on fine but not transparent paper, and show no sign of preliminary markings. It would be a worthwhile project in the developing study of nineteenth-century manuscript facsimiles to compare digitised samples with both the monochrome photographs and original gouache miniatures in this copy.
Illustration attributed to Jean Poyet until 1868 when newly discovered documents proved it the work of Jean Bourdichon. Cf. Bourdichon, J. Les Heures d'Anne de Bretagne. Paris, 1946

Presumed first or sole edition of this bilingual English-Japanese picture book showing the costumes of men and women of the various ranks of orders of Japanese society. It includes aristocratic and military subjects, as well as servants, scholars, labourers and craftspeople. The English preface states ‘These books are not only designed to please children, but to show the manners and customs of the ancient and modern people of Nippon. The fine illustrations afford an important aid in this respect. It is through the eye that understanding itself is most quickly reached’.
It was printed by the Poole Women’s College in Osaka. Arthur William Poole, after whom the Osaka Women’s School was renamed in 1890, was the first Anglican Bishop of Japan. The school had been founded as the Church Missionary Society school and its head teacher from 1890 to 1928 was the Durham-born missionary educator, Katherine Tristram, one of the early female graduates of the University of London. When she was appointed ‘there were at the school two other British women apart from Tristram, as well as eight Japanese teachers, including four women, and there were forty-nine pupils, of whom twenty-three were Christians’ (Oxford DNB).

A splendid bibliophilic caricature. ‘The bouquiniste in pleasure’ shows a crouching bookseller, his sleeves made of reused book-covers, offering a variety of books to a voracious bibliophile, whose pockets are already stuffed with treasures. The print is signed simply ‘XX’ but is attributed to Auger by the Bibliographie de France of 1817. Adrien-Victor Auger (1787-1854) had been a student of David, he exhibited at the Salons of 1810, 1824 and 1834 and satirised fashionable Paris society through his lively engraved and lithographed prints.

Despite his former military success in service in the American and French Revolutionary wars Custine was found guilty of treason by a majority vote of the Revolutionary Tribunal on 27 August, and guillotined the following day. ‘Custine (an ex-noble) was guillotined on 28 Aug. (in spite of his previous victories), accused of having treacherously caused the fall of Frankfort, Condé, Valenciennes, and Mayence. According to the English newspapers, he “kissed the crucifix, embraced his confessor... and at last was brought to the guillotine by force”’ (BM Satires).
‘Custine stands on the scaffold beside the guillotine (left). Four ragged ruffians are about to bind him to the plank on which he is to lie; one says, “By Gar so we will serve all de Generals who do not conquer de whole World, and give them de Libertè [sic]”. Custine says, “Pardon me Heaven for having been leagued with such a set of Blood hounds”. A stout soldier pushes a weeping priest, who says “Let us Pray”, down the steps (right) which lead up to the scaffold, saying, “Go to de diable & Your Prayers both”. Below (right) stand republican soldiers with fixed bayonets much caricatured. On the extreme left a man kneels at the guillotine holding his hat in place of the usual basket; he says, “Begar I will have a Drink of de blood.” BM Satires, 8340; De Vinck 6176; Krumbhaar 785.

‘Down, down, to Hell & say A Female Arm has made one bold Attempt to free her Country’ reads the speech emerging from Charlotte Corday’s mouth as she holds a bloodied dagger, just withdrawn from the body of Marat, who has fallen to the ground. The subtitle reads: ‘Who [Corday], while he [Marat] was villifying some of the more moderate men in the Convention and asserting that they should lose their heads stabed [sic] him saying, Villain thy death shall precede theirs.’ Charlotte Corday was condemned to the guillotine for the murder of Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat. Aged just 25 at her death, she was later nicknamed l’ange de l’assassinat (the Angel of Assassination) for her actions and was posthumously revered by Royalists for her stand against the injustices of the era of the Terror.
News of Marat’s assassination (on 13 July), without details, reached London on 22 July making this the earliest dated British print to depict her. Several later prints, including another by Gillray, depicted her trial and execution. BM Satires 8336; De Vinck 5298; Krumbhaar 1077.

First fully illustrated edition of the most popular German fairy tale books of the nineteenth century. This edition follows the first edition of the previous year which was illustrated with just a wood engraved frontispiece. Deutsches Märchenbuch contains eighty-eight tales, plus Bechstein’s introduction and an allegory, Des Märechens Geburt (The Birth of the Fairy Tale) in which two bored children are brought a gift in the form of an egg (the fairy tale) by a bird called Fantasy. The allegory was dropped in most of the many later editions. Many of the tales are derived from Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen, though Bechstein’s collection came to far exceed theirs in popularity.
Several of the steel engraved plates are signed ‘Schurig fec.’ (perhaps Karl Wilhelm Schurig?) and ‘G. Alboth sc.’, others are signed ‘Brennäuser fecit.’ (i.e. Andreas Wolfgang Brennhäuser). They are delightful miniatures in high romantic style with decorative captions and ornaments with gothic details. They depict: Des kleinen Hirten Glückstraum (The little Shepherd’s Dream of Happiness); Das tapfere Schneiderlein (The brave little Tailor); Hensel und Grethel (Hansel and Gretel); Staar und Badewän[n]elein (The Starling and the little Bathtub); Hans im Glücke (Hans in Luck); Tischlein deck dich, Essel streck Dich, Knüppel aus dem Sack (he Wishing-Table, The Golden-Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack); Schneeweisschen (Snow White); Dornen-Röschen (Sleeping Beauty); Aschenbrödel (Cinderella) and Helene. From the edition of 1853 (the twelfth) the current illustrations were replaced by those by Ludwig Richter.

Issued in a small number of typescripts for private circulation. An extraordinary short history and summary of several interesting cases that occurred in the New York Branch of the Office of Naval Intelligence, compiled by Hollis H. Hunnewell, Voluntary Aide with other staff members for Lieutenant-Commander Spencer Eddy, Officer-in-Charge. It covers an important era of development, when the ONI (the oldest member of the US intelligence network) was tasked with espionage in monitoring foreign threats, both in naval affairs and domestically, detecting hostile acts among non-American communities, and acting as censor for cable communications. Though the author states in the inserted letter ‘I must lay stress on the fact that these pages are strictly confidential in nature, and for your own personal use’, the books seems, in retrospect, to be a rather reckless exposition of the Office’s actvities.
It is both serious and comical, with the the first half of its text setting out the history and aims of the ONS, its personnel and departmental structure, and the second half presenting a series of humorous anecdotes. The Office’s departments comprised: the executive and the espionage departments together with departments for: cables, plant protection, commercial, banking, Latin-American, I.W.W (for surveillance of the unions or ‘Industrial Workers of the World’), Russian and Czecho-Slovak, legal and file. A paragraph each describes their remit and a photographic copy of a flow-chart diagram explains the procedure of communication between agents and officers. A list of officers (including Eddy and Hunnewell) is provided, comprising voluntary aides, agents, enlisted men, enlisted men detailed to the Postal Censorship Office, enlisted women, civilians, telephone officers. The text then becomes an account of humorous mistakes and misunderstandings, presumably for the amusement of former members of the office. These are accompanied by well-known illustrator Maginel Wright Enright’s lighthearted vignettes (presumably commissioned for this account) which would be charming except for one obviously racist caricature accompanying an equally racist anecdote. There are two stories of botched espionage attempts using dictographs: one in which the apparatus was hidden in what was thought to be a disused fireplace in the home of a suspect (with predictable consequences) and another in which agents pick up only sounds of an amorous encounter between and agent and a suspect.
Worldcat locates two copies one at Georgetown University, the other in the US Naval War College Library. The latter is digitised, and contains one additional photograph (a group photo of officers) not present in our copy (probably never bound in). Though the texts are essentially identical, minor typographic variances confirm that copies were individually typed rather than duplicated. Our copy (unlike the NWCL copy) is specially bound in the style of Cobden Sanderson at the Rose Bindery, Boston (which was owned by the author, Hunnewell).

First published in 1738, Soumille’s illustrated guide to trictrac (a variant of the game of backgammon) was reprinted several times in the eighteenth century, the present 1756 edition probably being the second (another edition appeared at Avignon in the same year). This copy contains a delightful contemporary first person ex libris inscription giving voice to the book itself:
‘je suis a qui je suis, a autre ne veut être, et si perdut je suis promtement je veux être remit a qui je suis Alexandre est mon maïtre’. (’I belong to who I belong to; I do not wish to belong to another, and if I am lost, I want to be promptly returned to the one I belong to. Alexandre is my master.’) Barbier II, 565.

First published in 1766 and memorably called ‘that vivacious compost of obscenity and adventure’ (Charles Whibley, 1898) Le Compère Matthieu proved to be among the most popular satirical ‘philosophical novels’ of the ancien régime. As frequently suppressed as it was republished, it makes a strong showing among confiscations tabulated in the Robert Darnton’s Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France 1769-1789. Strongly materialist, anti-establishment and anticlerical it was wrongly (if understandably) attributed to Voltaire. It continued to be published after the Revolution, but no longer surreptitiously and the present edition (often referred to as the best) is known in elegant large papier vélin copies like the present, with the rather gothic plates avant la lettre. The fine binding is by Bozerian le Jeune (Virgil François Bozerian 1765-1826) perhaps the finest and certainly the most emblematic bookbinders of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, who notably produced several hundred bindings for the French Imperial Library. This copy was in the library of Claude-Auguste Genard (1819–1908) of Grenoble, then that of New York collector (and early Grolier Club member) Frederic Robert Halsey (1847-1918). The Huntington Library purchased the Halsey library en bloc in 1915, but sold many duplicates or other unwanted volumes. Cohen-De Ricci, 336: ‘Les exemplaires in-8, sur papier vélin avec les figures avant la lettre sont recherchés’.

First edition with the English text of the Preparatoirlyk plan, van een tractaat van commercie (Plan of a Treaty of Commerce) projected between Holland and the United States. Though never concluded it is important as one of the earliest treaty negotiations by the American nation after the Revolution. The plan had been secretly negotiated at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1778 between William Lee, American commissioner to Berlin and Jean de Neufville, an Amsterdam banker professing to act on behalf of the city and was to be concluded when England acknowledged America as a free nation. A detailed treaty it contains thirty four articles outlining terms of trade between the two nations, and the form of passports and certificates for ships. It is subscribed Jean de Neufville and Samuel W. Stockton, the American lawyer, diplomat and public servant who was later to serve as Secretary of State of New Jersey from 1794 to 1795. It is followed by transcriptions (also in Dutch and English) of the associated diplomatic correspondence. An edition of the Dutch text only appeared also in 1780 which Sabin (65110) refers to as the ‘Original edition’, though it is not clear on what basis.
The draft was inadvertently made public in 1780 when the vessel in which the bearer of it, Henry Laurens, South Carolina merchant, planter, and revolutionary leader who served as President of the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1778 was apprehended at sea by the English. The Plan was found among the effects he threw overboard on his capture and Laurens was imprisoned for treason. The treaty was not strictly illegal, but the British Government was able to construe it and other retrieved papers detailing Dutch financial aid to the rebellious American colonies as being equivalent to actual aggression. Although it was neither authorised nor sanctioned by the States-General nor by Congress, it served as a pretext for England’s declaration of war against the Netherlands.
It was handed to the Dutch Estates General by the British Ambassador, General Joseph Yorke, debated and published here as one of the Extracts of the resolutions of the Estates General of the Netherlands. Sabin 63286: ‘Official edition of the Preparatory Plan’ (projected 1778 at Aix-la-Chapelle), with the correspondence relating to it, as it was presented by the Chev. Yorke, as found with the papers of Mr. Laurens, to the Prince of Orange, and sent by the States General to the Provinces. The subscription of the Treaty is changed in all the reproductions — Müller’. Cf. Sabin 65110 for the original Dutch edition (two editions, also 1780).

A popular pocket dream dictionary abridged from Vulson de la Colombière’s influential Le Palais des curieux first published in 1660 and widely disseminated in popular form. The foot of the final page includes a series of numbers offered as the most likely to be drawn in the national lottery. Many of the dream interpretations are familiar (loosing teeth signfiying death, a rainbow in the East, good fortune, white horse, joy and so on) while other motifs are more bizarre (seeing one intestines eaten by someone else, seeing harpies flying in the air, kissing a dead person, for example). René Helot, La Bibliothèque bleue en Normandie (1928). 12

Mandiargues eroto-surrealist poem ‘Dalila Exaltée’ paired with Bona’s extraordinary etched plate, in the first volume of this important series whose aim was to create a dialogue between contemporary poetry and modern printmaking.
Published under the direction of Odette Lazar-Vernet, the Paroles Peintes series was dedicated to the presentation of otherwise unpublished poetry and original etchings by an international roster of modernist artists. It ran to five volumes between 1962 and 1975. This is the first volume and presents the work of Bona and André Pieyre de Mandiargues alongside the work of Chagall, Ernst and Braque, among others.
This copy is number 193 copies of 200 copies (there were also 58 hors commerce copies). The texts are 14 poems by Aragon, Arp, Albert-Birot, Follain, Guillevic, Joyeux, Laude, Lescure, Liberati, Mandiargues, Paulhan, De Solier, Tapié and Tardieu paired with 14 plates by Chagall, Magnelli, Zadkine, Gilioli, Ubac, Bissière, Jacobsen, Fiorini, Ernst, Braque, Dufour, Lepatre and Vieillard.
Bona de Mandiargues, or simply ‘Bona’ (1926-2000) remains one of the most intriguing women of the French Surrealist movement. Best known for her fabric collages (she cut up her husband’s clothes and called them ragarts) she also illustrated a number of books, including several with etched plates issued in limited editions. A frank memoir of Bona’s childhood in an Italian villa, Vivre en Herbe (Gallimard, 2001), recalls the early inspiration of her flamboyant artist uncle, Filippo de Pisis, but also episodes of disturbing abuse and the terrors of the Second World War. In Paris in the 1940s she met the poet Pierre de Mandiargues (she married him, twice) and was drawn into the circle of André Breton. Taking inspiration from journeys to Mexico, the world of the Surrealists and her own ‘inner eye’, she pursued a singular artistic vision. She notably took the motif of the snail as an emblem (admiring its wholeness, its hermaphroditism and its self-sufficiency). Though her work was exhibited regularly, her first institutional retrospective was held at the Nivola Museum in Sardinia (2022).

First edition, number 29 of 37 hors commerce copies (total edition 297 copies), inscribed by author and artist, with the fine etched plate printed by G. Leblanc signed by Bona. Critiquettes reproduces his short essays or prefaces, many reproduced from the Nouvelle Revue français. Beginning with a chapter on Bona (with whom Mandiargues would be reconciled and remarried to), there follow essays on surrealists Unica Zürn and Dorothea Tanning, as well as on Bellmer, Hundertwasser, Gail Singer, Baj, Jean-Jacques Lebel and Francisco Toledo.
Bona de Mandiargues, or simply ‘Bona’ (1926-2000) remains one of the most intriguing women of the French Surrealist movement. Best known for her fabric collages (she cut up her husband’s clothes and called them ragarts) she also illustrated a number of books, including several with etched plates issued in limited editions. A frank memoir of Bona’s childhood in an Italian villa, Vivre en Herbe (Gallimard, 2001), recalls the early inspiration of her flamboyant artist uncle, Filippo de Pisis, but also episodes of disturbing abuse and the terrors of the Second World War. In Paris in the 1940s she met the poet Pierre de Mandiargues (she married him, twice) and was drawn into the circle of André Breton. Taking inspiration from journeys to Mexico, the world of the Surrealists and her own ‘inner eye’, she pursued a singular artistic vision. She notably took the motif of the snail as an emblem (admiring its wholeness, its hermaphroditism and its self-sufficiency). Though her work was exhibited regularly, her first institutional retrospective was held at the Nivola Museum in Sardinia (2022).

A rare surrealist broadside, subscribed by André Breton, Bona and André Pieyre de Mandiargues among 29 others, against and exhibition and conference held at the Galerie Kléber by the right wing abstract artists Georges Mathieu and Simon Hantaï. The event, known as Les Ceremonies commemorated the Catholic Inquisition’s 1277 condemnation for heresy of the teachings of the Aristotelian scholar Siger de Brabant at the University of Paris, whereby the church attempted to halt the revival of classical thought in the Middle Ages. The Surrealists, shocked by the religious and deliberately reactionary nature of this event, responded with this broadside Coup de Semonce (’Warning Shot’) illustrated by Bona.
Bona de Mandiargues, or simply ‘Bona’ (1926-2000) remains one of the most intriguing women of the French Surrealist movement. Best known for her fabric collages (she cut up her husband’s clothes and called them ragarts) she also illustrated a number of books, including several with etched plates issued in limited editions. A frank memoir of Bona’s childhood in an Italian villa, Vivre en Herbe (Gallimard, 2001), recalls the early inspiration of her flamboyant artist uncle, Filippo de Pisis, but also episodes of disturbing abuse and the terrors of the Second World War. In Paris in the 1940s she met the poet Pierre de Mandiargues (she married him, twice) and was drawn into the circle of André Breton. Taking inspiration from journeys to Mexico, the world of the Surrealists and her own ‘inner eye’, she pursued a singular artistic vision. She notably took the motif of the snail as an emblem (admiring its wholeness, its hermaphroditism and its self-sufficiency). Though her work was exhibited regularly, her first institutional retrospective was held at the Nivola Museum in Sardinia (2022).