history

A broadside catalogue of misogyny — with familiar and unfamiliar citations from Genesis, Augustine, Jonas, John Chrysostom, Gregory, Origen, Cato, Jerome, Tertullian, Plato and Pythagoras. Evidently intended as a satire it is known in more than one imprint, from France and from Ghent, but with only a small handful recorded in library collections. The Bibliothèque nationale holds two, one of which is digitised (having a woodcut, rather than typographical, headpiece).

The sheet apparently already had a central horizontal crease when placed under the press, resulting in a blank horizontal line across the centre, portions of the affected letters arranged (without loss) above and below.

[GILLRAY, James] The German Dancing Master. London: H[annah] Humphrey, April 5 1782. (188 × 242 mm, sheet size 215 ×272 mm). Closed tear (c. 120 mm) to lower portion, neat old repair to verso, visible as a single line to recto. BM Satires, 6096.
A dancing-master with a fiddle, said to be Jansen, the German ‘maître de ballet’ in London, instructs a fashionably-dressed young male pupil, whose moves are not elegant. A younger boy looks on. The imprint and initials are of Hannah Humphrey, one of the leading London printsellers, who published much of Gillray’s work and was his protector in later life.
The Devonshire Minuet. London: William Holland, May 29 1813. (236 ×320 mm). Cut to plate mark. Two closed tears towards the foot, both with expert and unobtrusive old repairs. BM Satires, 12052.
The debutante Princess Charlotte (daughter of George, Prince of Wales, later George IV, and Princess Caroline) dances with the young William Duke of Devonshire (son of William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire and Lady Georgiana). Charlotte’s appearance in society after an adolescence of jealously guarded solitude, caused a sensation in London and her appearance at balls was widely reported and discussed. A tragic figure, she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg in 1816 and died the following year in childbirth. This is a light-hearted, sympathetic and uncaricatured depiction, showing approving ladies and gentlemen grouped on either side.
WILLIAMS, Charles. Dos a Dos or Rumpti iddity ido. Natural Accidents in practising Quadrille Dancing. London: S.W. Fores, May 1817. (250 × 355 mm, sheet size 280 × 405 mm), marked ‘No 1’ in upper margin. Two tears towards the foot, both with neat old repairs, the second being to lower right corner with small (replaced) loss to the blank margin. BM Satires, 12933. Apparently an adaptation of an earlier print by Cruikshank.
― Wrong-Contre or Vis a Vis. Natural Accidents in Practising Quadrille Dancing. London: S.W. Fores, May 1817. (240 × 350 mm, cut to plate mark), marked No. 2 in upper margin. Lightly browned. BM Satires, 12934.
― Les Graces de Chesterfield. Or Quadrille Dancing – pour la Pratique. London: S.W. Fores, May 1817. (240 × 350 mm, sheet size 260 × 380 mm), marked No 3 in upper margin, early price stamp 1d to lower margin. BM Satires, 12935.
Three of an original set of four rare Williams caricatures (the fourth was entitled Le Moulinet, or practising Quadrille Dancing at Home). The Quadrille was the dance craze of the 1817 season and entailed considerable practice, even among seasoned dancers. Numerous guides were printed and dancing masters offered tuition, evidently with mixed success.

A rare trilingual juvenile vocabulary, the French with syllabic divisions, the Bengali with full early manuscript transliteration (in a single hand). The vocabulary is extensive, covering everyday necessities, including basic anatomy and health, clothing, foodstuffs, church and school, animals (mainly domestic), numbers, character, minerals and gems, crime and law, behavioural traits, military terms, trade and commerce, science and geography. The subscribers list contains circa 120 names, of which 31 are native Indians. Sir Charles Edward Grey (Chief Justice on the Supreme Court of Bengal 1825-1832) heads the list with six copies, while the first of the Indian subscribers is Maha Rajah Budenauth Roy. Despite the title statements we can identify no earlier edition, nor further part. We can locate copies at Bodley and Library of the American Oriental Society (Yale) only.

First edition of the the first book published by a notable French female scholar, who became celebrated as a naturalist and one of the first women elected to a scientific academy in France. The book is a historical and cultural study of her native city, presented as a dialogue between herself and a scholar, and was dedicated to the écoliers of the Collège du Havre. Trade and commerce are at the forefront, but the city’s literary heritage is celebrated, notably in the persons of Madame de Scudèry (born in Le Havre) and Madame de Lafayette (whose father was a city governor). Her own teacher, the astronomer and naturalist Jean-François Dicquemare is also considered,

As one of the primary gateways of France, Le Havre participated in many of the country’s most significant exploits, including the transatlantic slave trade. In the Entretien, mademoiselle Le Masson Le Golft recounts a conversation on the slave trade. Her student, referring to a visit aboard a slave ship, tells her the impression made on him by the iron shackles on board, and asks: ‘Comment, me suis-je de en moi-même, avec des moeurs si douces, tant de lumières & de philosophie, la cupidité peut-elle nous porter à étendre cette tache sur notre siècle?’. His teacher is equivocal, saying she underrstands but that his regrets are useless and they will discuss this at greater leisure. While Le Masson Le Golft is usually portrayed as an opponent of slavery, her attitudes may have been ambivalent. Rare: Worldcat locates no copy outside France, even though the author’s later works are well represented in libraries.

First separate edition, scarce. Only in 1889 did the The Universities (Scotland) Act establish a legal framework that allowed universities to make arrangements for women to study and graduate, and until 1892, women at Scottish universities could not receive a degree. Christina Struthers’s polemical essay, which preceded the early meetings of the Executive Commission for the Scottish Universities. It first appeared in the Aberdeen Newspaper. WorldCat: Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews only.

First edition A very rare tract on Indian female domestic life, and in particular the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. The only reference we have encountered is a review that appeared in the early feminist journal, The Englishwoman’s Review of Social and Industrial Questions: ‘A useful little pamphlet describing the misery prevalent in India from the universal practice of children’s marriages, and the helplessly enslaved condition of daughters-in-law. Any publication which directs the attention of Englishwomen to the immense field for exertion which awaits them among the unfortunate women of the East, are welcome.’ The author had been a missionary in India and was, at the time of writing, a leading member of the Presbyterian General Assembly of Northern Ireland. Unlocated in library catalogues.

Apparently very rare (no copies located in the usual databases). The Somerville Club was the first women’s club founded in London, for graduates of Somerville College, Oxford (the women’s college founded in 1879). It lists over 700 members and 47 committee members. The club was founded by the geologist and educationist Catherine Raisin (she appears in both lists here); other early members included the pioneer doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the physician, Matilda Ayrton and the journalist and educationist, Jane Chessar and Octavia Hill (founder of the National Trust). Its principals were democratic, insisting that class was no barrier to membership, and mutually sustaining, ‘to provide a place where women engaged in different kinds of work, and having different experiences of life, could meet together and learn to know and help one another’.

The list was printed by the Women’s Printing Society Limited founded by Emma Paterson and Emily Faithfull in the 1870s.

First edition of this rare explanatory pamphlet issued to accompany the 1837 issue of Samuel Cousins’ popular engraving after Wilkie. The engraved key gives a numbered explanation of the picture while the text gives the historical account, complete with excerpts from Byron.

David Wilkie’s celebrated painting of 1828, immediately purchased for the Royal Collection commemorates the two-month siege of Saragossa in 1808, when the local guerrilla leader Don José de Palafox y Melci led heroic, ill-equipped citizens to victory. This episode in the Spanish struggle for independence from Napoleon had also been commemorated in poetry and prose, most notably by Byron in ‘Childe Harold's Pilgrimage’. In the picture Agostina Zaragoza (the ‘Maid of Saragossa’) lights the fuse in the cannon which Palafox, dressed as a volunteer, directs with Father Consolaçion, an Augustinian friar. Worldcat lists the Harvard copy only.

First edition of this rousing patriotic endorsement of French manufactures, with its invocation of the might of the king, on the eve of the Revolution. A ‘France First’ manifesto, it insists on the primacy of French metalwork, silks, and cloth — pointing out that women could demonstrate their patriotism by renouncing plain white mousseline dresses (from Eastern sources). It insists on domestic linen manufacture, which could be a source of employment for sixty thousand people and on the imposition of means-related taxation. Peddling (‘colportage’) or other unregulated trade is to be strictly forbidden. It is signed at the end ‘R..... patriote’. Worldcat: UCB, Newberry, Harvard and Toronto in North America.

First edition, with author’s signature at the end of the preface and with various small manuscript corrections, presumably editorial. An exhaustive proposal for a post-Revolutionary national bank based on property the title bears Mengin’s statement his aim: ‘Fonder l’intérêt public sur l’intérêt particulier, les concilier pour l’avantage général de tous ces citoyens, multiplier les richesses nationales, tel est l’unique but de cet ouvrage’ (‘Basing the public interest on private interest, reconciling them for the general advantage of all citizens, multiplying national wealth, such is the sole aim of this work)’. The folding tables include models for four different credit notes: Papier rouge, papier bleu, papier jaune and papier vert.

First edition, rare, of a historical novel on the English Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 and its leader, Wat Tyler. An original work by Defauconpret, better known as the French translator of Walter Scott, largely responsible for introducing Scott to an enthusiastic European audience. Besides his important Scott translations he published several novels of his own, usually historical. The first half-title verso advertises ‘Robin-Hood, ou Le Proscrit, par le même auteur’, which was published under the title Robert Fitzooth, surnommé Robin Hood, ou Le chef des proscrits (but not until 1828). No UK or US copies located.

First edition of this rather extraordinary survey of Curzon’s many appearances in caricature in Hindi Punch and other Indian comic papers, where he often appears in Indian dress and frequently as various Hindu deities (notably Ganesh). ‘This unpretentious little book is offered as a humble souvenir of the Delhi Durbar: in its pages our popular Viceroy, as representative in the great Coronation Durbar, of the greatest monarch of modern times, is the central figure. In a land of her-worship it is not to be marvelled that the energy, versatility and strong personality of Lord Curzon, added to his many loveable traits, should lend themselves easily to the genius of the Indian artist for caricaturing’ (author’s Preface).

Despite this warm introduction, Curzon was subject to both approval and dissent through these images. The satire of British comic publications like Punch was enthusiastically appropriated by Indian artists - and India itself was frequently represented through the figure of Mr Punch - though their caricatures were also influenced by Indian artists such as Raja Ravi Varma. It is a fascinating fusion.

A popular eighteenth-century chapbook, one of several on the subject of Wat Tyler and the Peasant’s Revolt. The text is perjorative towards both Tyler, Straw and his fellow rebels, seeing them as traitors to the realm. The final page bears the woodcut arms of the City of London and the text explains the (apocryphal) story that the incorporated dagger represents the weapon used by Sir William Walworth to slay Tyler (though the arms do indeed date from 1381, the dagger is actually the emblem of the martyrdom of St Paul). ESTC t36566, listing the National Library of Scotland copy only.

An early seventeenth-century heraldic pedigree of the Offley family of Madeley (Staffordshire) with the arms of their prominent dynasty of London guildsmen, which include Henry Offley (d. 1613) who had married Mary, the daughter of Sir John White Lord Mayor of London; and Thomas Offley (1501-1582), a successful wool and cloth merchant — Lord Mayor of London in 1556. Also in the lineage is Stephen Jenyns (1453-1523) another important London Lord Mayor with Wolverhampton origins whose arms are accompanied by an elaborate cartouche noting his mayoralty. An early docket on the verso (legible with ultra-violet light) reads: ‘The Pedigree of Stephen Jenings’.

The youngest member of the Offley family shown is John (b. 1586). He was educated at Middle Temple and married in 1605. He was knighted in April 1615, served as sheriff of Staffordshire in 1616-17 and was a magistrate for the county by 1621. 1625-6 he was MP for Stafford. Another contemporary version of the pedigree is described in the Staffordshire Visitation of 1614:

‘Quarterly — 1. Argent, on a cross fleurettée azure a lion passant-guardant or [OFFLEY]; 2. Azure, a chevron between two eagles displayed in chief and a lion passant in base or [NECHELLS]; 3. Argent, a chevron gules between three plummets sable [JENNINGS]; 4. Azure, a tiger passant or [LANE]. CREST— A demi-lion rampant-guardant or, holding an olive branch vert, fructed gold’ (’Heraldic Visitations of Staffordshire in 1614 and 1663-64’, in History of Staffordshire, 1884).

First edition, copy number 7 of 100, of this sumptuously illustrated version of the story of the Queen of Sheba, combining illustrations by Barbier and the Abyssinian artist Michel Engueda-Work. French scholar, traveller and diplomat, Hughes Le Roux had transcribed parts of the Ethiopian chronicle Kebra Nagast in 1904, with the help of local scholars, from a manuscript looted by the British at Maqdala and subsequently returned. The Kebra Nagast or ‘The Glory of the Kings,’ is a fourteenth-century national epic of Ethiopia, written in Geʽez by the nebure id Ishaq of Aksum. In its existing form, the text is at least 700 years old and purports to trace the origins of the Solomonic dynasty, a line of Ethiopian Orthodox Christian monarchs who ruled the country (until 1974), to the biblical king, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

The story of the text’s survival is interesting. The Battle of Maqdala, the last struggle in the British Expedition to Abyssinia, led to significant looting by the victorious British forces, who took Emperor Tewodros II’s crown along with ceremonial crosses, chalices, weapons and the holy icon Kwer’ata Re’esu along with two fine manuscripts of the Kebra Nagast which found their way to the British Museum (catalogued as Oriental MS 818 and 819 respectively). 819 was returned to Ethiopia in 1872 on the request of the Abyssinian king, who identified it as a fundamental source of law. Hugues Le Roux, a French envoy from the President of the French Republic to Menyelek II, King of Ethiopia, later went to Addis Alem in order to see this manuscript and to obtain his permission to translate it into French. He notes in his introduction here the inscription ‘This volume was returned to the King of Ethiopia by order of the Trustees of the British Museum, Dec. 14th, 1872’. Of the artist Michel Engueda-Work who is referred to elsewhere as an ‘Abyssinian artist’, almost nothing else is known, but his illustrations are of course far truer to the Ethiopian style than Barbier’s highly exoticised and eroticised interpretations, in which Sheba is portrayed (following long tradition) as a white woman.

First edition. Blondel (1705-1774) was among the most influential French architects of his day and De la Distribution des Maisons de Plaisance provides one of the most extensive and best-illustrated accounts of Enlightenment taste in both houses and gardens with its many plates, elevations and plans. This copy is of the second issue, giving ‘rue Dauphine’ as the printer’s address, issued without half-titles or errata, but otherwise identical to the first issue of the same year.

‘As a teacher, first in his own school (1743–54) and later at the Académie Royale d’Architecture, Blondel influenced such students as the Scottish architect William (later Sir William) Chambers, best known for his Somerset House for the Royal Academy of Arts in London (1776; later replaced); the French architect Richard Mique, who did much work for Marie-Antoinette at Versailles’ (Ency. Brit.). Fowler 49.

First edition of this superbly illustrated account of Girardin’s garden at Ermenonville, which was inspired both by the philosophy of Rousseau and the English landscape gardens of the eighteenth century. It was to become Rousseau’s resting place, within an elaborate tomb on an island in the Lac de peupliers. The delightful aquatint plates here depict the philosophical temple, picturesque grottoes and torrents. It as reprinted in 1811. Much of what Girardin created was destroyed in the Revolutionary era Cohen-De Ricci 439; Hunt 695.

First edition, number 57 of 175 copies, inscribed by Schmied in pencil on the limitation leaf, a superb illustrated book with colour wood engravings by François-Louis Schmied, printed in gold and colours successively from multiple blocks. The French translation is by Joseph Estève and the preface is by Louis Barthou. The colophon states that the illustrations, ornaments and the maquette for the book were first exhibited in 1922 at the galerie Georges Petit (who were exhibiting Braque, Léger, Picasso and Matisse in the early twenties).

The book is dedicated by Schmied to fashion designer Jean-Philippe Worth. This copy belonged to French publisher, bookseller and bibliographer Léopold Carteret (author of Le trésor du bibliophile romantique et moderne, among others). The striking and highly accomplished binding is by Mireille Magnin, daughter of the bookbinder Marius Magnin.

Ritchie, Francois-Louis Schmied, 26.

A rare publisher’s advert for a short-lived satirical almanac devoted to the comic lowlife of the Parisian Latin Quarter, with its famously hedonistic students and lorettes courtesans or sex workers). The lorette emerged both in reality and in the popular imagination during the July Monarchy (1830-48), named after the Right Bank church of Notre Dame de Lorette where they were thought to reside and the almanac promises a range of playful gender inverting fun based on the ‘Vésuviennes’ (popular heroines of the 1848 revolution who donned uniform and took to the barricades) including the confessions of a Vésuvienne and their ‘Charte-Constitution’.
During the February Revolution of 1848, French women briefly hoped for political rights and an improvement in their social situation. Such hopes were short-lived and popular reaction was expressed in satires like this. The complex image of the Vésuvienne woman warrior, both pleasantly seductive and scandalously rebellious. She appeared in all the major newspapers, while real women in the streets claimed this title by parading under a Vesuvian banner. Their morality was often called into question and it is no surprise to see lorettes and Vésuviennes share a billing here. In Belhomme’s lithograph, three lorettes step out of basket (one thumbing her nose); a reflection of a popular contemporary song ‘Le Panier aux lorettes’.

First edition of the last book by a prolific French clairvoyant — in the form of a decree from the gods of Mount Olympus, this is a spirited plea in favour of the Duchesse de Berry then imprisoned for leading a rebellion against Charles X after the July Revolution. Like Le Normand’s other works it is couched in terms of dreams, predictions and angelic interventions. It bears her signature on the back of the half-title as a measure against piracy and the frontispiece shows her taking the Duchesse’s hand in prison, as an angel swoops down to crown her.

Marie-Anne Le Normand (1772–1843) was a celebrated (or notorious) clairvoyant, publisher, booskeller and self-publicist 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 Emperor Alexander himself; others argued that the whole thing was a sham, and she was frequently arrested, spending several weeks in prison.