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A French pocket-sized box probably designed to hold a portrait miniature; an attractive example of an alternative use of gilt tooling, more usually associated with book binding.

An elegantly produced autograph manuscript in gold ink of Mesnage’s satire in hexasyllables denouncing the arrivistes of the Second Republic. It is apparently unpublished. Born in 1821 at Evron (Mayenne), Mesnage claimed direct descent from Racine and published several poetical works, including Les Fleurs d’Avril (Laval, 1854 of which a copy is included here).

First separate edition of the extract from the Mémoires de la Société royale et central d’agriculture. A report on the newly-invented English system of cambered road building pioneered by John Loudon McAdam. It includes a short description of new road-building and paving in London (Saint James, Regent Street and Guildhall). Rare: Worldcat lists the Michigan copy only outside France. No UK copies located by Jisc/Library Hub (formerly COPAC). Not in Kress or Goldmsiths’.

First edition of this extraordinary treatise on the status of eunuchs in society, according to civil and canon law. Largely based on classical sources, history and (most interestingly) anecdotal evidence from the Orient, Ancillon considers the reasons for the phenomenon (including slavery, household, employment or punishment for sexual misdemeanour). The major contention is that while civil law permits a eunuch to marry, canon law should forbid it (as it did) on the grounds that a marriage could not be consummated. Along the way Ancillon recounts numerous anecdotes of famous eunuchs, notably Abelard, castrated at the instigation of Heloise’s family.

The book was later translated into English by Robert Samber as part of Edmund Curll’s Eunuchism display’d (1718).

This copy of Traité des Eunuques is one of at least two issues of the same year with slightly different paginations and title ornaments. The ‘Epitre dedicatoire’ is signed: ‘C. d’Ollincan’ an anagram of the author’s real name. Gay III, 1239.

This portrait is a naive interpretation of the classic image of Ramon Llull (c. 1232- c. 1315), Catalan mystic and mathematician. It is derived from the engraved portrait which first appeared in the seventeenth century Bibliotheca Chalcographia published by Jacques Boissard and Theodor de Bry in 1664.

First edition of this extensive global dictionary of conflict, covering both ancient and modern history. Though the longest entries tend to be for battles involving France, there are good entries for many other conflicts. Notable are: Agincourt, Bannockburn, Barnet, Belle-Isle, Bosworth, Siege of Calais, Calcutta, Crécy, Culloden, Dunes, Dunkirk, Edinburgh, Gènes, Gibraltar, Harlem, Hastings, Inverness, Jerusalem (many), Lerida, Londonderry, Madras, Marlborough, Martinique, Messina (numerous), Minden, Naseby, Orleans, Paris, Poitiers, Pondicherry and Rome (many). The American continent is represented by entries for: Cartagena de Indias (1741), Choueugen [Oswego], (1756), Havana (1762), Louisbourg (1745 and 1758), Quebec (1759), Rio (1711), Tumbes (and the conquest of Peru). The first volume concludes with an alphabetical index of military leaders.

An attractive pocket bible.

First edition of this French translation by doctor and philologist Lefebvre de Villebrune.

First published in 1747; Madame de Graffigny’s epistolary novel was a best-seller in numerous early editions. This illustrated version, with the addition of the suite entitled Lettres d’Aza (first published 1748), by Ignace Hugary de Lamache-Courmont, bears an approbation dated 14 September 1759 but was first published in 1752. cf. Cohen-De Ricci 447 (1752 edition).

Prévost’s novel Le doyen de Killerine was first published in 1735 and was frequently reprinted. Set in Ireland, it tells the story of the attempts of a worldly Irish priest’s attempts (usually thwarted) to find suitable marriage partners for his siblings. It is full of romantic anguish, especially in dealing with the thorny question of intermarriage between Protestant and Catholic, and was influential in forming the French taste for ‘celtic’ novels which became so prevalent towards the end of the century and in the next. This copy is an early match of a 1760 edition of volume 1 and 1744 editions of the remainder, with slightly different spine tooling, unified by matching labels (presumably c. 1760). cf. Cioranescu 51276-7 (1735 and 1740 editions).

Second edition (printed in the same year as the first) of her historical novel on the reign of Louis XIII, who she revered for his piety and whose reputation she sought to rehabilitate in France. Cioranescu 30670.

First printed in 1678, with numerous reprints, a milestone in the history of European fiction, generally considered the first historical novel and the first psychological novel. Eschewing the fantastic rhetoric of other seventeenth-century authors such as Madeleine de Scudéry, and the excesses of heroic romance, La Fayette preferred to explore the realities of human emotion when exposed to love and jealousy and told a remarkably modern story of a virtuous young wife who suppressed her passion for a nobleman in the name of honour and duty. In so doing, La Fayette launched the ‘novel of character’ as a genre, in which the character of the protagonists is more important than the events of the plot. Set in the previous century during the reign of Henri II and with carefully researched historical detail, the novel nevertheless pursues themes of individuality and public expectation absolutely contemporary to its author’s times. After La Fayette, writers of French novels continued to be preoccupied with the realistic analysis of love, but none of their productions can compare with Princesse de Clèves until perhaps Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782).

Second edition (first 1779) of Tressan’s free translation, a version which turned the sixteenth-century chivalric romance into a hugely-popular French novel. cf. Cioranescu 62210 (1779 edition).

First edition in Italian of Théis’ popular Voyage de Polyclète (1821) written in the mould of the travels of Anacharsis as an introduction to ancient Roman customs and antiquities.

First edition in French of Carl Engelmanns Tagebuch (1800) from Lafontaines’ Familiengeschichten series (1797-1804), translated by novelist Isabelle de Montolieu. Lafontaine’s didactic tales of domestic life, though now little remembered, were among the most-read German novels of the day. OCLC: Bibliothèque Sainte-Genviève, Indiana and Penn State only.

First edition of Genlis’ historical novel, full of overt analogies to the upheavals of the Revolution, written during Genlis’ exile and offered as a sequel to Les Veillées du Château. It appeared in English in a translation by James Beresford as The Knights of the Swan in 1796 (printed for J. Johnson). A measure of its remarkable currency in the literature of the following century is provided by its cameo appearance in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. On an occasion when Prince Andrew visited General Kutuzof, ‘He found him reclining in an armchair, still in the same unbuttoned overcoat. He had in his hand a French book which he closed as Prince Andrew entered, marking the place with a knife. Prince Andrew saw by the cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis’ (X, chapter 16). Cioranescu, 30617; Martin, Mylne & Frautschi, Bibliographie du genre romanesque français, 1751-1800, 95.20.

First edition of the last of Galart de Montjoie’s several novels on a Spanish theme. A Royalist throughout the Revolution, the author spent several periods in hiding, but emerged as a prolific journalist and novelist after the fall of Robespierre, contributing to the Journal des débats, and Journal général de France. Margaret Rees, French Authors on Spain, 1800-1850 A Checklist (1977), As 37. Rare: OCLC lists copies at Bn, National Library of Sweden and Michigan State University only.

Marianne exercised a lively influence on the development of the novel both in France and England, being widely-read on both sides of the Channel. Left incomplete by Marivaux, it was first published in 11 individual parts between 1731 and 1741 and a final part added later by Madame Riccoboni. There were numerous French and English editions: this attractive Cazin-like edition contains all 12 parts, the ‘Londres’ imprint is false, and the second volume bears a Paris ‘chez Laporte’ imprint. cf. Gay IV, 1338 and Cioransecu 42737-42747 (first edition), neither lists our edition. ESTC: BL, Amsterdam Universiteitsbibliothek, Johns Hopkins, McGill and McMaster. OCLC adds no more.

First editions in French of the two novels Old Mortality and The Black Dwarf (1816) from Scott’s Tales of my Landlord, only the second volume of Scott’s fictional works to appear in France (after Guy Mannering). Pseudonymously issued, both in Britain and France, it was listed under the pseudonym ‘Cleisbotham’ in the Bibliographie de France. This is the first of Auguste-Jean-Baptiste Defauconpret’s translations and marks the beginning of Scott’s celebrity in France: ‘the first considerable success’ (Dargan). It is also one of the most influential of Scott’s works in France. ‘Defauconpret’s Les Puritains d’Ecosse gave Scott his first French success and first major European breakthrough. Although partially obscured by Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward, it remained for many Frenchmen the Scott novel Par excellence. Stendhal is among many to call Scott not ‘the author of Waverly’ but ‘the author of Old Mortality’ Often critical of Scott, Stendhal remained an unswerving admirer of Old Mortality’ (Barnaby). It was also frequently alluded to by Balzac throughout La Comédie Humaine.

On the strength of its immediate success, the publisher, Nicolle (the predecessor of Gosselin) engaged Defauconpret to translate subsequent novels as they appeared. Bearing in mind its tremendous influence on French European literature, the French edition is remarkably rare. WorldCat lists copies at Bn, NLS, Universities of Edinburgh, Leipzig and Princeton. E. Preston Dargan, ‘Scott and the French Romantics’, PMLA, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jun 1934), 2 & 3 (May 3); Paul Barnaby, ‘Another Tale of Old Mortality: The Translations of Auguste-Jean-Baptiste Defauconpret in the French Reception of Scott.’ in Pittock, ed., The Reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe, 2006; Garside, Raven and Schöwerling, The English Novel 1770-1829, 1816: 53.

First edition of a profusely illustrated Jesuit life of Christ, whose plates were engraved from the numerous devotional pictures by Flemish masters collected by the Jesuit father Jérome Natalis.