french

First edition of this very rare collection devoted to the street life of Paris, as observed by an imagined flâneur, some thirty years before Baudelaire defined the characteristics of the archetypal literary and aesthetic wanderer. The plates depict various familiar and unfamiliar aspects of Paris life — the title plate depicts the widow Lagarde, a dog and cat groomer, while other plates show browsers at a book stall in the Rue de Grès, walkers in the Luxembourg gardens, female basket carriers at la Halle, various vendors and hawker and fashionable women in the Boulevard de l’Opera. Complete sets are exceptionally rare (the British Museum catalogue lists only four of the series, for example).

Forest was a prolific caricaturist, working alongside both Grandville and Daumier for satirical journals such as La Silhouette and La Caricature. WorldCat lists only the Morgan copy (Michael Sadleir; from the library of Gordon N. Ray). Inventaire du fonds français après 1800, v. VIII, p. 101

A delightful reliure parlante depicting the statue of the so-called Black Madonna, an object of veneration for countless pilgrims, here binding two works printed at the shrine of Maria Einsidel, at Einsiedeln Abbey near Zurich. The Abbey, originally the hermitage of the ninth-century St Meinrad, became a major pilgrimage destination, attracting pilgrims to its Chapel of Grace, reputed by legend to have been consecrated by angels or by Christ himself. The central focus of the pilgrimage was (and still is) the fifteenth-century statue of the Black Madonna or ‘Our Lady of the Hermits’, successor to a much older image associated with St Meinrad himself. The Abbey became a significant centre for printing and several printers produced books, images and pamphlets for pilgrims there, but surviving bindings, presumably made there too, are rare.

‘The history of the Einsiedeln figure is somewhat convoluted: it is thought to have been carved about 1450, replacing a much older, seated Madonna. In 1798, the statue was secreted through Switzerland and Austria to protect it from the invading French army. It was uncovered the following year and given to the restorer Johann Adam Fuetscher, who describes having “repainted” the black face. It is assumed the original statue did have light, pink-colored skin, but the figure is thought to have turned black long before its restoration. While many sources further the idea that the statue was darkened from years of exposure to the flames and smoke from nearby candles, the image of the Black Madonna is nonetheless a distinct object of worship and pilgrimage’ (Hanna Siesel, The Frick Collection blog, September 16, 2016).

Afia Rezk, a Syrian textile artist now living and working in Paris, creates large scale textile installations using traditional weaving techniques. Here she has combined woven textile with monotypes printed from textiles to create a haunting artist’s book meditating on her own personal narratives woven into text/ile. Afia Rezk was born in 1980. She arrived in France with her family in May 2018. From childhood, influenced by Syrian crafts, she has used organic elements, living materials in constant mutation under the effect of oxidation, reduction and biodegradation. Her plastic research combines painting, collage, print, ceramics, weaving and installation. She studied Arabic literature at Damascus University before turning to the visual arts; she worked extensively in Syria before fleeing the war, leading workshops in both art and theatre as interactive practices to help families in emergency situations, as well as children and female victims of war. She exhibited in Syria, Lebanon, France, Sweden and Germany and is a member the Agency of Artists in Exile in France.

First edition of this guide to the treatment of the plague, which had ravaged France in 1668. Based on humoral medicine and miasma theory (the belief that diseases were caused by bad air or corrupt vapours). The author discusses how imbalances of the humours make the body susceptible to plague, recommends purification of air through fumigation, the use of plants and herbs, vinegar, and aromatic substances; maintaining bodily health through diet, temperance, and bloodletting. Among the various treatments Fournier lists various remedies and antidotes, including theriac (a compound medicine), cordials, and poultices intended to draw out pestilential poison, as well as bathing. He also advocates quarantine, isolation of the sick, disinfection of clothes and houses, and regulation of burial practices. Like many plague tracts of the era, it frames pestilence as both a medical and moral problem, urging repentance and prayer alongside physical remedies.

Included is a fine portrait of the author, master surgeon Denis Fournier (1613-1683) by Ganirel, a woodcut skull and skeleton (both evidently reused from medical treatises, being lettered for labelling) and three practical illustrations for the preparation of remedies (two showing vessels, another a bath). The book is dedicated to Charles Maurice Le Tellier, Archbishop of Rheims. The printer is the widow I. (J) Rebuffé, wife of Jacques Rebuffé (died 1663). She is not listed in the Répertoire d’imprimeurs/libraires (1500-1810) and L’Antiloimotechnie may be the only book to carry her imprint (at least in this formulation). Krivatsy/NLM 4236.

Probable first edition. Although the approbation is dated 1739, no earlier edition has been located. A reissue marked ‘nouvelle edition’ appeared in the same year (1741) — our edition carries no such designation on the title-page. Besides the calendar itself this is a compendious almanac of useful knowledge, including chronological, astronomical, astrological, geographical and hydrographical materials as well as remarks on fortification and on exchange and commerce. Included among the engraved plates is an an unusual circular plan showing the geographical orientation of the principal parts and towns of France and its neighbours in circular form, with Paris at its centre.
Worldcat: Bn; Texas and College of the Holy Cross (MA). Houzeau and Lancaster, 14239.

First edition in French of Middleton’s A Dissertation Concerning the Origin of Printing in England (1734–5), which argued vigorously that Caxton had introduced the printing press to England, against the popular notion at the time that William Caxton had been preceded by a printer at Oxford. Added is a short introduction (in French) concerning Middleton. The ‘Londres’ imprint is false, and the book was almost certainly printed in Paris. The typographical headpiece is a delight. Rochedieu, 213.

A rare Brussels piracy of a popular gothic and melodramatic novel, printed entirely on bright green paper. The book had first appeared in Paris the same year and seems to have been swiftly pirated by more than one Belgian printer. WorldCat locates no other copy with this Wahlens imprint, and thus probably no other copy on this striking paper. While green paper used in wrappers and bindings is widely recorded in this period (as well as the more common emerald green cloth used in ‘poison’ bindings) the use of a complete stock of green paper for the text block is rare. It remains to be determined whether such stocks are arsenical or coloured with heavy metal derivatives. Now wash your hands.

Thadéus le Ressuscité was a collaborative novel between Masson and Luchet, telling the story of a man condemned to death during the Terror who survived to encounter his accusers and betrayers in the post-Revolutionary period. It combines gothic melodrama with historical morality and allegory.

Huysmans died on 12 May, 1907 after a long illness. He had dictated the text of his funeral invitation In his last days, having reportedly seen the handsome black-edged funeral notice of an acquaintance. Calling himself homme de lettres, adding his presidency of the Académie des Goncourt and membership of Légion d’Honneur, he simply states that he died ‘muni des Sacrements de l’Eglise’ (fortified by the sacraments of the church). It begins with the address ‘M[onsieur]’ for the addition of a recipient’s name, but it is blank here. The souvenir card is similarly black-edged and contains short excerpts from five of Huysmans’ works: En Route, La Cathèdrale, Sainte Lydwine, L’Oblat and Les Foules de Lourdes. The funeral took place at the church of Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and Huysmans was buried in the cemetery of Montparnasse — clothed, according to his last wishes, in the garb of a Benedictine monk. Banks, The Image of Huysmans, p. 205,

An attractive pocket edition of Ségur’s study of the historical condition of women in ancient and modern society (first published in 1802) with a fourth volume containing Ida Saint-Elme’s continuation (first added to Les Femmes in the edition of 1822 with the title De la Condition des femmes sous l’Empire et sous la Restauration). It contains chapters on the Empress Josephine, Princess Charlotte of Wales, Madames de la Lafayette, de Sévigné, du Chatelet, de Graffigny, Riccoboni, de Genli, and de Duras. This complete edition of 1828 is rare.

Number 87 of 145 copies on Arches (after 22 on Japon, total edition 167, plus 25 reserved copies) of this stylish art deco interpretation of the French courtly poem of the thirteenth century, with illustrations by Robert Bonfils (the last finished by hand). The text is parallel, with the original on the left and Bédier’s modern French version on the right.

The binding by Franz Ostermann, called ‘Franz’ (1839-1938) is a superb art deco counterpart to the text, taking as its cue the chevron borders of the text. The chevrons are delineated by broad bands with with applied gold leaf, over a ground of grey and black morocco panels. The central panel is reserved for lozenges of grey and gold paper and overlaid marbled paper. It is a striking masterpiece of the mature years of ‘Franz’, a binder who had participated in most of the major strands of decorative arts in France from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the art deco period. Fléty, Dictionnaire des relieurs français 138; Peyré, Histoire de la reliure de création, 189.

First edition of one of the earliest French attempts to catalogue and describe the writing systems of various historic and contemporary languages — presented as a kind of museum of alphabets reflecting the diversity of human language and writing. It includes ancient Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac, Phoenecian, Arabic, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Georgian, Ethiopic, Etruscan and Gothic examples, as well as more than one alphabet deemed occult or ‘geomantic’. At least some appear to be imagined, and there seems no doubt that the intent here is as much aesthetic as scholarly. Colletet concludes with an alphabet which has recently come to his attention (he writes), engraved by someone he knows, formed entirely of characters derived from the postures of the human figure. He also notes the existence of examples of many more alphabets in various personal collections, notably that of the Parisian cleric René Michel de la Rochemaillet (1597-1658).
The second part is devoted to codes, ciphers and secret writing, also illustrated, and appears to be a rather faulty abrigement of Blaise de Vigenère’s Traicté des chiffres, ou Secrètes manières d’escrire. It includes alphabets disguised as stars and as masonry.
François Colletet (1628-1680?) was a poet, the son of the poet Guillaume Colletet, a protégé of Cardinal Richelieu. Galland, Historical and analytical Bibliography of the Literature of Cryptology, p. 44. Brunet II, 155; Graesse, VII (Supplement), p. 195.

First edition of these sermons by a French Huguenot emigré pastor in Dublin. The first two sermons are on the subject of religious toleration: ‘Contre l’Intolerance’ and ‘Les justes bornes de la Tolerance’. The Toleration Act had been enacted in Ireland in 1719, granting Dissenters freedom of worship and allowed them to run schools. Caillard argues that not only was intolerance immoral, but irrational and imprudent. ‘It is imprudent since enforcing a set of beliefs undermines society: it leads groups to take a defensive stance against other groups, destroying public order. It is irrational since, while coercion can lead people to accept a belief outwardly, it cannot alter their inner convictions. It is immoral because coercion’s inability to change inner beliefs means it can only breed lies and hypocrisy, and because individuals have the right to self-determination. However this toleration was not to be extended to Catholics. The sermon was preached on 5th November, commemorating the failure of the Gunpowder Plot. In a later sermon, Caillard established the limits of toleration. While still endorsing the individual right to self-determination, Caillard argues there is a limitation on religious freedom: that such freedom not be harmful to religion in general or society as a whole.’ (Toleration in 18th century Ireland, Irish Philosophy.com)

The book includes a subscriber’s list of men and women, both of Irish and French extraction. Among them is the name of moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson, then resident in Dublin. It is not difficult to trace a connection between Caillard’s arguments for tolerance based on circumstances and Hutcheson’s theories of moral rights, including the right to free conscience — which were later to have a profound influence on both the French and American constitutions. Outside Europe we find copies at Illinois, Charleston and Penn only.

First edition, one of 176, copy number 53 for collector Armand Durand, an excellent copy of a fragile production, rarely preserved in this state. It was later in the collection of André Barrier, president of the Cent Bibliophiles. An elaborate fin-de-siècle precursor to Carter’s ABC, Uzanne’s Dictionnaire bibliophilosophique has entries for all the major aspects of book production from the author, to publishing, printing, binding and marketing, of collecting and of reading. Memorably referred to as the ‘high priest of fin-de-siècle bibliophilia’ (Silverman, The New Bibliopolis, p. 14) Uzanne explored new technologies to create luxurious and appealing formats for his books, with innovative papers and printing techniques combined with design by artists such as Georges De Feure, who provided the striking art nouveau green jacket here (Millmann, Georges de Feure Maitre du Symbolisme et de l'Art Nouveau, Paris, 1992, p. 141). The japon paper for the text is watermarked throughout with a floral design by Léon Rudnicki. With a limitation of just 176 copies, it is one of Uzanne’s rarer productions, especially so in original condition. Carteret V, p. 189 (’Édition recherchée’).

An unusually well-preserved livre à système with a large number of printed slips encompassing the gamut of human wickedness according to the seventeenth-century Catholic church.
Designed as a practical aid to the sacrament of confession Leuterbreuver’s ingenious little work first appeared in 1677 and ran to many editions into the eighteenth century. Intended as a complete manual of confession, the moveable slips provided a solution to the age-old problem of making a full and detailed confession from memory. The confessor can mark the sins relevant to him or her by lifting the corresponding printed slips and then replacing them so that no-one need ever know what was confessed. In reality, the lifted slips were often folded to mark them more clearly and it is, of course, intriguing to see which of the hundreds of sins have been marked (comparatively few in this copy). The book as a whole provides an uncommonly intimate view of the seventeenth-century soul, akin to listing at the door of the confessional.
The sins are set out according to the Ten Commandments and provide a glittering array of human failings. One wonders whether the popularity of the book was as much because it provided such a panorama of the dark side of the soul. The list of sins for the ninth commandment, for example includes memoranda for ‘Avoir eu des pensées & des désirs lascifs. Y avoir eu de la délectation... Avoir prêté consentement aux illusions nocturnes... Avoit employé l’art magique des breuvages, & choses semblables, pour engager quelque personne en amour... Avoir dit des chansons lascives. Avoir dit les contes, & tenu des entretiens lascifs. Avoir fait des billets & écrits lascifs. Avoir eu, lû, & donné les Livres lascifs... Avoir jetté des regards déshonnêtes...’ WorldCat lists copies of this edition at the Catholic Institute of Paris and British Library only.

First separately published edition of the first full French translation of the Communist Manifesto. Partial French translations had appeared swiftly after the first edition of the German original but remained unpublished. Indeed, the influence of Marxist thought in France only took root from the 1880s, when it became dominant in French socialism. The translation of the manifesto is by Marx’s daughter, Laura Lafargue and appeared first in the journal of the Parti Ouvrier Français, Le Socialiste (29 August, 1885), followed by a version corrected by Engels himself in La France socialiste in 1886 and another journal appearance (Ère nouvelle, September 1894) but it did not appear in book form until our edition of 1895.

The translator Laura Lafargue, née Jenny Laura Marx (26 September 1845 – 25 November 1911) was the second daughter of Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen. She married revolutionary writer Paul Lafargue in 1868, translated Marx into French and was instrumental in spreading Marxist theory on the continent. She committed suicide by lethal injection with her husband in 1911 and is buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise.

Exceptionally scarce: copies at British Library and Stanford (Hoover Institution) only outside continental Europe. Andréas, Le Manifeste communiste de Marx et Engels. Histoire et bibliographie 1848-1918, 331 and see Printing and the Mind of Man 326 (first edition, 1848)

First edition, first issue, printed for private circulation in an edition variously estimated at between 25 and 40 copies — one of the great rarities of nineteenth-century European literature.
Ourika, based on fact, and influenced by Rousseau and Chateaubriand, is the complex story of a black African child, bought (some said rescued) from the slave trade and raised in aristocratic circles in Revolutionary France. It is the first fully developed attempt to portray a black heroine in Europe and the first French novel with a black female narrator. It proved controversial from the start and remains so. On the one hand it has been interpreted as a compassionate account of both racial and female alienation (Duras certainly projects her own experience onto that of her heroine) while on the other it has been described as a sustained act of appropriation and even as an apology for slavery. Whatever is the case, it caused a sensation with the first trade edition of 1824 becoming a bestseller and later editions very widely read in France and further afield (with early translations into English, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Danish).
This true first edition, which contains no date of publication, precedes Ladvocat’s 1824 first trade edition by at least three months, and was in circulation in December of 1823, on the evidence of several excited notices in the contemporary press (Pailhès). It is known in two issues, this copy being of the first, with the title page bearing only the title and a quote from Byron: ‘This to be alone, this, this is solitude!’. A second issue followed swiftly with the Byron quotation moved to the head of the text on p. 3 and 16 minor textual corrections; issue points which were recognised and enumerated by Louis Scheler in his article ‘Un best-seller sous Louis XVIII: Ourika par Mme de Duras’, Bulletin du bibliophile, 1988, 11-28. In both issues no author’s name is given and the place of publication and the printer (the Imprimèrie Royale) appear only as a colophon on p. 108. Scheler also cites Mme de Duras’s letter of 14 January, 1824, in which she notes that the first edition was of no more than 30 copies, though it is unclear whether this relates to the first issue only or the first and second.
Worldcat locates only the Bibiothèque nationale, Harvard, Morgan Library and Princeton copies of the first edition. Harvard actually holds copies of each of the two distinct 1823 issues. The Morgan Library copy is in red morocco with the arms of George IV of England, while the Princeton copy retains its original printed green wrappers. Carteret, Trésor du Bibliophile romantique et moderne 1801-1875 (1976) ‘de la plus grande rareté’, mentioning a single sale record for this edition: 24 May 1966 (morocco by Simier, 1700 francs); Pailhès, La Duchesse de Duras et Chateaubriand, p. 314-17.

Bernard Hoepffner (1946-2017) was a noted French translator of ‘difficult’ works in English, a major part of he European literary landscape, who counted works by Joyce, Orwell, Twain, Melville, Amis, Philip Sidney, Seamus Heaney among his many acclaimed translations. Polymathic and largely self-taught as a translator, he had trained as an architect. It was presumably during this training that he created this unique and unpublished collection of abstract designs in indian in and watercolour. Each of the 20 designs bears a title: naissance, espoir déçu, reflets d’une pensée, être agressif, être passif, un desolé, perspective, rêve, rather like a set of enigmatic tarot cards for reflection and meditation. He dedicates it ‘à Dazet, vers Jean, pour Abis’. By way of a preface he simply types ‘Pas de préface’, and as a postface he writes: ‘il ne faut pas confondre Minotaure avec Minautaure’ and gives a date of 29 April 1965’.

Hoepffner spent many years in Britain, first moving there as a young man. He worked variously a furniture restorer and smallholder, before finding his vocation as a translator. He served a president of ATLAS (Association
for the Promotion of Literary Translation) and died tragically at the age of 71, swept from rocks by the sea near his home in Pembrokeshire in 2017.

One of the strangest memorials of the Great War and one of the best known works by the nuns of Maredret, celebrated revivalists of the medieval art of manuscript illumination. The pastoral letter of Cardinal Mercier archbishop of Malines/Mechelen was addressed to the clergy and faithful of his diocese in the early months of the Great War, when Belgium was facing the terrible consequences of a German occupation, to encourage courage, fortitude and patriotic duty. Its text was taken by the two most talented nuns of the abbey of Maredret (near Namur), Agnès Desclée and Marie-Madeleine Kerger, and transcribed and illuminated under the most terrifying circumstances. The sheets were at one point hidden in a double-bottomed pig trough to evade discovery during the German occupation. The illumination records in medieval idiom key episodes of Belgium’s trials between 1914 and 191 — including the devastation of Aarschot, Dinant and Tamines, the execution of civilians, the burning of the halls and library of the University of Louvain as well as relief received from the United States. The medieval figures and scenes have subtle (even humorous) modernisations - notably the addition of modern Belgian, British and American flags, while the monstrous Krupp guns are rendered as canons. In each plate, the scenes are explained with brief captions on the tissue guards.

The manuscript was reproduced after the war and issued in this 1921 edition, the prefatory text in either French or English (this copy in French) and sent to supporters around the world, notably in the United States. This copy is one of the 750 numbered copies on Hollande (after 500 on Japon).

J.P. Morgan in New York was to become one of the nuns’ most effective patrons in the years following the war, notably purchasing their Messe pour les Époux made in 1915 in 1921. He had been introduced to the abbey by the head of the British Museum, Frederic George Kenyon via Belle da Costa Greene. The original manuscript of the pastoral letter remains at Maredret (classified a national ‘trésor’ in 2015), while the British Library holds a manuscript copy of a single page (Add MS 40082). The work of the Maredret nuns and the genesis of this book is described by Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, ‘Un Art très monastique. L’atelier des bénédictines de Maredret de 1893 à 1940] in Thomas Coomans and Jan de Maeyer (eds.) Renaissance de l'enluminure médiévale. Manuscrits et enluminures belges du XIXe siècle et leur contexte européen. Leuven University Press, Leuven 2007, pp. 295-309.

One of several designs created by the artist for her own ex libris, this one with a scrolling arabesque device to the upper portion and her name in full below, with the strokes of every letter terminating in a cross.

One of several designs created by the artist for her own ex libris, this one with a vulture and a cobra, reminiscent of several of her miniature paintings in the orientalist style from the same period.