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A SUPERB RENDERING OF BERNARDIN DE SAINT PIERRE’S TALE OF PAUL ET VIRGINIE ON A FRENCH TOILE FABRIC. The six repeated scenes depict the principal episodes of the Rousseau-inspired story, set among the exotic vegetation of the Île Maurice (then Île de France, now Mauritius). In the first, a letter from Virginie’s European family is brought to her, in the presence of Paul, their respective mothers and two black servants. In the second, the governor of the isle summons Virginie to order her return to Europe, before the horrified Paul and the supplications of their kneeling servant; in the third she leaves the island by night, borne on a litter by four servants. The fourth depicts the tragic climax of her shipwreck, as she attempts to return to Mauritius. Two small secondary scenes are symbolic of the the young couple’s pure and untainted love — braving the storm together under her apron, and Paul weeping over the body of his beloved.

First published in 1788, Paul et Virginie was an immense success partly on account of the rich and visual culture it inspired, encompassing prints, games, ceramics and fabrics. Its abolitionist themes also coincideded with other popular fabric patterns, notable a rendition of the Traite des nègres produced around the same time. Several renderings in toile are known, but this example from the Normandy firm of Goutan around the year 1820 is one of the most impressive. The engraver Toussaint Caron (1790-1832), whose name appears as though carved on a rock in this scene, made several other toile designs around the year 1820 as well as engraved prints on paper.

French toile prints (often referred to generically as ‘Toiles de Jouy’ after the products of the famous factory at Jouy-en-Josas) were one of the great successes of French industrial production, but are often overlooked as examples of popular iconography and of engraved printmaking. This example from Normandy was printed using the mordant technique ― the design printed from large engraved copper plates with an invisible mordant. Once the cloth was dyed, the pink colour adhered only to the mordant-printed areas, being entirely washed away from the remaining blank background. Quand les toiles racontent des histoires. Les Toiles d’ameublement normandes au XIXe siècle [exhibition catakogue] (2007), no. 25.

A SUPERB SMALL-FORMAT EXAMPLE OF THE CALLIGRAPHY OF THE WRITING MASTER DUVAL, rendered with engraved plates, here with fine hand-colouring, probably contemporary. Duval (born in 1635) was from a family of master writers. He became secrétaire ordinaire de la Chambre du Roi and lived at Versailles, where he published a series of treatises on administrative writing in the 1670s and 80s, some in partnership with Louis Senault. This Nouvelles heures probably appeared after the death of Senault and is a very scarce variant of one of the several reprints Heures nouvelles en françois dediées au Roy published jointly by Senault and Duval in the 1680s. Bonacini, 561, p. 114

First authorised edition in French, the translation by Alfred Gérardin. It contains a bilingual address by Dickens giving his approbation to the translation as part of a Works series projected by Hachette, concluding: ‘This is the only edition of my writings that has my sanction. I humbly and respectfully, but with full confidence, recommend it to my French readers. Charles Dickens. Tavistock-House, London, January 17th, 1857’. It is the translation in which Oliver Twist was read by French readers into the twentieth century, though the identity of Alfred Gérardin remains obscure.

Earlier unauthorised editions had appeared in 1841 (Olivier Twist, ou l’Orphelin du depot de medicité, published by Barba) and in 1850 (Les Voleurs de Londres by Bedollière). The present Gérardin translation was issued a volume of Hachette’s of Bibliothèque des meilleurs romans étrangers in 1860 (and Monod is incorrect to state that it was first issued in 1864). cf. Sylvère Monods, ‘Les premiers traducteurs français de Dickens’, Romantisme, 1999, 29, 106, pp. 120-1. BL only in Jisc/Copac. WorldCat lists US copies at Morgan (Gordon Ray’s copy), San Diego, Chapel Hill, New Jersey State.

A POWERFUL RECORD OF THE DESTRUCTION IN PARIS during the Paris siege by the Prussians in 1870 and during the brief era of the Paris Commune and its suppression. The sixty-seven prints show a variety of streets, squares and monuments. Some have captions (within the print) giving locations and Disdéri’s name and they include: Rue de Lille, Place Vendôme, the Tuileries, the Louvre, Rue de Rivoli, Place du Chateau d’Eau, Porte Maillot (chemin de fer de Ceinture), Fort d’Issy, batterie de Chatillon and St Cloud. Two photographs depict the Colonne de Juillet (intact) erected in 1830 to commemorate the 1830 revolution, while two others show the ruins of the Colonne Vendôme, torn down by the Communards in 1871. The three loosely-inserted cabinet photographs are by Émile Robert an include two the same column, with the toppled statue of Napoleon and communards posing nearby.

Disdéri, best known for his popularisation of the carte de visite phenomenon in France, was prominent among the many contemporary photographers who captured the era. They were widely sold, disseminated and collected in the aftermath of the violence.

FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH, translated (with substantial additions) from Rowley’s Medical Advice for the Army and Navy in the present American Expedition (London, 1776). The translator, Casimir Marcassus-Puymaurin of Toulouse, explains in a preface that he was inspired to publish by the success of that book in England but also because the similarity of the climate of Georgia and Carolina considered by the army surgeon Rowley and the climate of summer in the south of France. Worldcat lists the University of Toulouse copy only.

A RARE COLLECTION PRINTED FROM THE ORIGINAL PLATES ENGRAVED BY A PRODIGIOUSLY TALENTED FEMALE ENGRAVER. ANTOINETTE [OR ANTONIA] STELLA-BAUZONNET (1641-1676) ‘was the youngest daughter of a successful French goldsmith. Despite the restrictions placed on women in art academies at the time, her family’s prominent social status allowed her and her sisters, Françoise and Claudine, to receive private training. Her uncle Jaques Stella, a painter and close friend of Nicolas Poussin, assisted his nieces and nephew in their artwork, inviting them to live in his prestigious lodgings at the Louvre. As the youngest of the children, Antoinette was additionally trained by her older siblings. The family frequently collaborated in painting, engraving, and publishing prints. Remembered for her masterfully executed aquatints and engravings, Stella suffered a tragic fall and died in Paris at the age of 35. One of Stella’s most notable works, The Entrance of the Emperor Sigismond into Mantua, 1675, consists of 33 relief-style engravings on paper depicting crowds of men, women, children, and horses traveling alongside the emperor’ (National Museum of Women in the Arts website).

Stella-Bouzonnet’s plates were prepared after drawings by her father Antoine Stella at Mantua. They were printed first in 1675 and were later purchased and reprinted by Joubert, with Chereau, in 1787 (and probably for some time after). In this copy their imprint line giving the date of the reprint has been erased. Each of the plates has been closely cut and mounted in a large album c. 1800. It is of a type (and condition) suggesting use as an artist’s model book. Both the 1675 and 1787 editions are rare.

A COACHING ATLAS, IN ITS ORIGINAL TRAVELLING BINDING, providing distances, departure times of coaches and other practical information for the major routes within and around the kingdom of France, allowing the planning of coach journeys from Paris to major destinations such as Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strasbourg, London and between regions, and from Amsterdam to Marseille and Strasbourg to Vienna through France.

Desnos (1725-1805) was a prominent instrument maker and globe maker as well as a prolific cartographer. His Atlas first appeared in 1764 and was several times reprinted, each time with augmentations and modifications. This edition is described as the third on title, but the Atlas had already been published more than three times ― with a prior edition of 1765 also bearing the third edition statement. It is dedicated to astronomer and cartographer César-François Cassini de Thury (1714-1784), who was made director of the Paris Observatory in 1771. The title page describes the atlas ‘Première partie’, since Desnos later issued a volume devoted to foreign roads: Nouvel Itinéraire général comprenant toutes les grandes routes et chemins de communication des provinces de France, des Iles Britanniques, de l'Espagne, du Portugal, de l’Italie, [etc].

Bondy, p. 77; Welsh, 2012, 2788, 5569, 6481, 3312 and 5558. In the US, Worldcat lists the Wightman copy at the Morgan Library and the Adomeit copy at Indiana together with a copy at the University of Colorado.

FIRST EDITION of this delightful collection of floral poetry illustrated with unusual colour printed plates, each of two or three tints probably applied to the plate simultaneously. They are described by the online catalogue of the Bibliothèque nationale as lithographs, but they appear to be a kind of stipple engraving. A couple are marked as being after drawings by Poitreau, one of the most prominent botanical artists of the era (alongside Redouté). The work is dedicated to the young salon host, collector and bibliophile, the duchesse de Berry (1798-1870). An Italian princess, she had married the duc de Berry in 1816, bearing him four children before his assassination in 1820. Her children were direct descendants of Louis XIV and thus her family were important during the Bourbon restoration as representatives of the Legitimist claim to the throne of France. She was exiled after the 1830 July Revolution and lived successively at Bath and Edinburgh before returning to Italy, where she intrigued for an unsuccessful Legitimist rebellion and a return to France.

The plates comprise: Le lis, la rose, la violette, la fleur d’oranger, la scabieuse, le bleuet, l’immortelle, la perce-neige, le soleil, les marguerites, le laurier rose, l’hortensia, le souci, l’astérie, le pavot et le narcisse and le lilas.

A RARE ‘PHYSIONOTRACE’ PORTRAIT OF THEODORE SEDGWICK (1746–1813), the American attorney, politician, and jurist who served in elected state government and as a delegate to the Continental Congress, a U.S. representative, and a senator from Massachusetts. He served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate from June to December 1798. He also served as the fourth speaker of the United States House of Representatives. He was appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1802 and served there for the rest of his life. He died at Boston and he is buried at Stockbridge. A portrait by Gilbert Stuart of c. 1808 is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Sedgwick studied theology and law at Yale College and though he did not graduate, he continued in his study under attorney Mark Hopkins of Great Barrington. He played a significant role in the abolitionist movement. As a relatively young lawyer, Sedgwick and Tapping Reeve had pleaded the case of Brom and Bett vs. Ashley (1781), an early ‘freedom suit’, in county court for the slaves Elizabeth Freeman (known as Bett) and Brom. Bett (also known as MumBet)was a black slave who had fled from her master, Colonel John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts, because of cruel treatment by his wife. Brom joined her in suing for freedom from the Ashleys. The attorneys challenged their enslavement under the new state constitution of 1780, which held that ‘all men are born free and equal.’ The jury agreed and ruled that Bett and Brom were free. The decision was upheld on appeal by the state Supreme Court. She was the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. She marked her freedom by taking the name of Elizabeth Freeman, and chose to work for wages at the Sedgwick household, where she helped rear their several children. She worked there for much of the rest of her life, buying a separate house for her and her daughter after the Sedgwick children were grown. On her death the Sedgwicks buried her at Stockbridge Cemetery in the family plot.

Before the advent of photography the physionotrace was ‘the first system invented to produce multiple copies of a portrait, invented in 1786 by Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1774–1811). In his apparatus a profile cast by a lamp onto a glass plate was traced by an operator using a pointer connected, by a system of levers like a pantograph, to an engraving tool moving over a copper plate. The aquatint and roulette finished engraved intaglio plate, usually circular and small (50 mm), with details of features and costume, could be inked and printed many times’ (Photoconservation.com, sub Printing Processes).

The miniaturist Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) had emigrated from France in 1793 to Switzerland, where he practised as an engraver. Crossing the Atlantic to Canada and then the United States, he established a portrait business in New York with his compatriot Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit (who initially produced the drawings for Saint-Mémin to engrave). When Valdenuit returned to Paris, Saint-Mémin adopted an itinerant practice all over the East Coast states, working variously at Philadelphia, Richmond, Charleston and Burlington. He too returned to France in 1814, having destroyed his drawing apparatus in a symbolic end to a prolific artistic enterprise which produced more than a thousand different portraits of significant figures in American society, including Washington, Revere and Jefferson.
fferent portraits of significant figures in American society, including Washington, Revere and Jefferson.

A large broadside advertisement for a French provincial entertainment, purportedly drawn from the worldwide travels of its animateur. ‘M. Saunier, Professeur de Physique, le seul qui a donné ses expériences ans les quatre parties du Monde, (l’Europe, l’Asie, l’Afrique et l’Amérique,) devenu, depuis sa rentrée en France, interprête des Etrangers et Membre de la Société sur la rapport des Découvertes des quatre Nations, donnera demain sa premiere représentation de son Spectacle unique pour l’adresse’.
Saunier’s advertised performance is also notable for a performance on the ‘Harmonica’ – at this date a version of the large ‘Armonica’, consisting of revolving concentric glass bowls, invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761. With its ethereal and unsettling tone, the Armonica was widely manufactured in America and Europe. Working on the principle of vibration caused by rubbing the finger around the rim of a glass vessel, the instrument combined a large number of such vessels on a revolving spindle to form a kind of keyboard capable of playing quite complex pieces as well as creating atmospheric sound effects suitable for the theatre, the opera and travelling shows such as Saunier’s.

First edition of a very rare gothic romance set in England by an author who described herself as a ‘portière’ (or concierge). Julienne Bayoud is known to have published two novels, the present Fidélia (1822) and Céline (1823). Fidélia was quite well reviewed in Revue encyclopédique, 14 (1822), in which it was noted that given the lowly status of the the author as a portière the novel’s style demanded surprisingly little indulgence on behalf of the reader, and that it contained much that was lacking in contemporary novels of its type. Beyond the address given in the imprint, little is known of the circumstances of Mme. Bayoud. Pigoreau names her as the daughter of a humble hat maker and posts that she must have been self-taught, while complimenting the novel’s pure and elegant style. The five corrections in a contemporary hand found in our copy do not follow a printed errata, and may just be authorial. Pigoreau, Deuxième supplément à la Petite Bibliographie biographico-romancière de Pigoreau (15 February 1822, pp. 31-2). Worldcat lists copies in the Bibliothèque nationale, Frankfurt, Goettingen and Leipzig but none outside continental Europe.

First edition, rare, of an epistolary novel by a Frenchman in London, who was variously described as a diplomat, an adventurer and a spy. Treyssac de Vergy had come to England at the time when a circle of French diplomats, including the Comte de Guerchy and the Chevalier D’Eon were making themselves notorious by involving the English courts in their interpersonal disagreements. Vergy was widely accused of being hired by de Guerchy to make an attempt on the Chevalier D’Eon’s life. He wrote several sentimental novels in English, including The Lovers and The Scotchman both noted in the preliminaries of the first volume here. Dedicated to Lady Harriet Stanhope, the novel was reprinted in Dublin in the same year and again in London on 1785 as part of The Novelist’s Magazine. ESTC: British Library, Bodley and Paxton House (Scottish Borders) only, Worldcat adds no more.

A popular guide to writing love letters, intended for the use of young men and women. Presented in pairs, there are numerous letter samples, usually from the the man to the woman, with her response. There is a useful synoptic table of the several types of love, together with a description of several invisible inks or ‘encres sympathiques’. Cf. Gay, III, 821 (editions of 1825 and 1842, attributed to Cuisin). The Bibliothèque nationale catalogue lists editions of 1825 and 1837 (but not our edition). All editions appear very rare.

A DELIGHTFUL BOOK-FORM BOX, complete with gilt spine bands, gilt borders to the sides, four gilt bosses (one on the upper cover apparently missing) and gilt edges. The lid incorporates a mirror and the base a hand coloured print.

A diminutive Geneva psalter in green vellum. The French text is Bèze and Marot’s rhymed version first published in 1562 in which the 150 psalms were set to 124 melodies. Worldcat locates the Geneva copy only of this edition.

An attractive illuminated leaf in gothic type. The text is a portion of the Office of the Dead from a Book of Hours and opens with the prayer or chant: ‘Ne recorderis peccata mea domine. Dum veneris iudicare saeculum per ignem’ (Remember not my sins, oh Lord. When thou shall come to judge the world by fire).
Ex libris James Dearden. Folio Society Collector’s Corner. Catalogue 7 (1962), item 135, illustrated (£3.10).

This attractive fragment includes the opening of the prayer to the Virgin ‘O intemerata’ (O Immaculate), commonly included (with the ‘Oscecro te’) in a medieval Book of Hours. Folio Society, Collectors Corner (n.d, ?1960) £2.

The verso includes the first part of Psalm 42, ‘Quem admodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum’ (Like as the hart desireth the water). Ex libris James Dearden. Folio Society Collector’s Corner, catalogue 11 (1962) item 190 (£4).

An attractive single leaf from a Book of Hours including, as an antiphon, the opening verses of Psalm 95, ‘Cantate Domino cantico novum; cantate Domino omnis terra’ (O sing unto the Lord a new song). Ex libris James Dearden. Folio Society Collector’s Corner, catalogue 9 (1962), item 173 (£3)