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A charming book-form trinket box, of unknown manufacture, but with other examples known to have been marketed in London in the late nineteenth-century. The monogram reads ‘M.S.’ (though admittedly it could also be ‘S.M.’) and it has been plausibly suggested that the reference is to Mary Queen of Scots, given the all-over thistle pattern. Mary was executed in 1587 and so it is just possible that these boxes were in some way marketed at the time of the three-hundredth anniversary, though we can do no more than offer this as a suggestion.

An anti-Napoleonic tract, describing the French victories in Italy under Napoleon in 1796, under the figure of the Roman conquest of Greece. Having published more than one such critiques, Barzoni had fled Venice in 1797. First published in 1797 under false imprint, there were numerous editions and issues of I Romani nella Grecia with ‘London’ imprints like this, probably all printed in Venice.

Appended to this copy, probably contemporaneously are four popular patriotic songs or verses of a type which would have circulated semi-clandestinely in manuscripts like these. One is entitledL ‘Alfieri all sua Patria’. This edition not in ESTC, which lists a 1797 edition with the F. Rivington and G. Robinson imprint, and several other editions 1797-9.

First edition of this rare French treatise on the origins, history and functions of a herald. The title bears a woodcut of a herald in a fleur-de-lys tabard, while the arms on the title verso are those of the dedicatee Claude Gouffier and those on the final leaf of author Jean Le Féron (1504-1570) himself. With its Middle Hill boards and pencil markings to the front pastedown this is likely to be from the collection of Sir Thomas Phillips.

A rare ‘physionotrace’ portrait of Hannah Breck (1772-1846, later Mrs James Lloyd). The original charcoal and white chalk drawing from which it was engraved is preserved at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts. Hannah Breck was daughter of statesman Samuel Breck (1747-1809), and sister to Samuel Breck (1771-1862), a congressman from Pennsylvania. She married James Lloyd (1769-1831), a senator from Massachusetts, and is referred to as Anna or Hannah in various sources.�

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).

Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) had emigrated from France in 1793 to Switzerland, where he practiced 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. Dexter, The St. Memin Collection of Portraits (New York, 1862), 24; Miles, Saint-Mémin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America (Washington, 1994), 83.

First edition in Russian of Beccaria’s Dei Delittie e delle Pene (1764) translated from the French version of Morellot. In his fundamental Enlightenment legal treatise Beccaria opposed the death penalty and ‘maintained that the gravity of the crime should be measured by its injury to society and that the penalty should be related to this’ (Printing and the Mind of Man). It was enthusiastically read (in French) by Catherine the Great while codifying her own celebrated legal manifesto, Nakaz, in which almost a third of the text came directly from Beccaria, alongside major borrowings from Montesquieu’s L’Ésprit des lois. Given Catherine’s intellectual omnipotence it is perhaps unsurprising that no Russian edition of Dei Delittie e delle Pene itself appeared during her reign, even though its spirit imbued her widely disseminated Nakaz — required reading for anyone involved in Russian law and government. Thus Beccaria’s principles came to serve as ideals for future legislators in Russia and were fully incorporated into Russian criminal law by the end of the nineteenth century. The title of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (Prestupléniye i nakazániye, 1866) is only the most prominent emblem of Beccaria’s influence in Russia.

‘The first [Russian] translation of Beccaria came out in 1803. It was done by the poet D. Yazykov from the French translation by Morellet, edited by Roederer in 1797... the translation is one of the best in Russian. It manages to convey not only the ideas of the treatise but also the spirit, the language of Beccaria and his contemporaries. It is dedicated to Alexander I...’ (Cizova).

Dmitry Ivanovich Yazykov (1773-1845), writer, translator, academician and director of the Ministry of Public Education later published a translation of Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois in 1809–14. Cf. Printing and the Mind of Man 209. Rare: Worldcat lists only the NYPL and Yale copies in anglophone countries. T. Cizova, ‘Beccaria in Russia.’ Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 40, No. 95 (Jun. 1962), pp. 384-408.

Sole edition of this rare little handbook of ladies’ fashion and deportment. Advertised as a translation from the English, there is no obvious British analogue, though it is an interesting indication of the esteem in which British fashion was held in France at this period. The four plates are especially charming depictions of Austen-era styles. The format is very much that of contemporary almanacs with similar titles, but Le Miroir des Graces appeared only once. WorldCat lists no UK or US copies (copies at BnF, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and Kunstbibliothek Berlin only).

A satirical song collection, in the form of an almanac, lampooning the new Revolutionary institutions. The frontispiece (here in rare colour-printed state) is probably the first book illustration to depict a yo-yo, a toy which became a craze in France in the 1790s under the name of the émigrette, reflecting its popularity among the French nobility at precisely the time they were forced to flee their country. A 1789 painting of the future King Louis XVII now in the Louvre shows him with a yo-yo, while in a revival of the Mariage de Figaro of 1792 Beaumarchais brings his hero on stage playing with his émigrette.

Several issues are known from 1792. An issue with identical pagination and the same plate but with the imprint ‘chez les libraires royalistes’ is usually cited as the first. In this issue Maradan has put his own name on the title. cf. Martin & Walter, 22975; cf. Cohen-de Ricci, p. 677 (’Frontispice non signé, attribué par Mehl à Debaucourt. Ce frontispice existe en couleurs (avant la lettre) en bistre et à la sanguine’).

An interesting group of receipts for labouring and building work carried in Cumbria, including Kirkoswald, Dolphenby, Skeugh and other named places. Several are for significant amounts received from Sir Philip Musgrave to Thoams Westmorand who oversaw a variety of works: wall building, making a pump, tiling, flagstones, boarding and cutting spiles. Most are from the eighteenth century.

First editions of two very rare Swedenborgian sermons preached in the New Jerusalem Temple in Cripplegate. Separately issued, they were the first two in a series of 12 published in the same year listed on the advert leaf with details of subscription. On completion, all twelve could also be bought bound up with a general title as Twelve Sermons (also 1796). They are rare both alone and collectively — ESTC lists copies of these first 2 sermons at BL only and copies of the collected Twelve Sermons at: BL, Glasgow, Rylands, Academy of the New Church and Louisiana State University. The printer, Robert Hindmarsh was one of the founders of the Swedenborgian movement and the Church of the New Jerusalem in England. The publication dates of both titles is given as 1796=40, reflecting the Swedenborgian belief that the Last Judgement had occurred in 1757, with 1796 representing the 40th year of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ through divine revelation.

‘Sibly... (1757–1840), Swedenborgian minister and banker, was born at Bristol on 20 August 1757. He was the brother of Ebenezer Sibly (1751–c. 1799), a notable publisher of esoteric lore, and was himself an autodidact and nonconformist, self-taught in the classical and biblical languages, part of the self-taught artisan culture. He specialized in alchemy and astrology, and became for a period a bookseller in Goswell Street, London, specializing in books on the occult, some of which his brother was then publishing. He himself translated two astrological works by Palcidus de Titis... He also served as a shorthand writer... (ODNB).

They are here bound together with three other East London non-conformist sermons:

Joseph Priestley, The present State of Europe compared with antient Prophecies; a Sermon, preached at the Gravel Pit Meeting in Hackney, February 28, 1794, being the day appointed for a general fast. By Joseph Priestley, LL.D. F. R. S. &c. with a preface, containing the reasons for the author’s leaving England. London: for J. Johnson, pp. xx, 44, [8] (advert/catalogue for Priestley’s books). First edition.

William Cooper. The Promised Seed. A Sermon, preached to God’s ancient Israel the Jews, at Sion-Chapel, Whitechapel, on Sunday afternoon, August 28, 1796. By William Cooper.... London: Printed for the author; and sold by T. Chapman and J. Matthews, [1796], pp. 38. One of several editions of 1796 and probably the first.

William Cooper. Daniel’s Seventy Weeks. A Sermon, preached at Sion-Chapel, on Sunday Afternoon, September 18, 1796, to the Jews. By William Cooper. Being his second Address to that People. London: Printed and sold by T. Chapman, 1796, pp. 32. One of several editions of 1796 and probably the first.

A French satire on the excesses of contemporary fashion for both women and men — a woman has her corset laces mechanically tightened by a fop in a ridiculously exaggerated version of Napoleon’s headgear and a young woman in a scooped bonnet and corset (which leaves her breast almost entirely bare). The corset enjoyed a brief resurgence in popularity in the Empire era, before being swept away once more at the Restoration. It was a frequent subject of mirth in the popular press on both sides of the English Channel, and while there are several French and English prints on the same theme, this one is very rare.� Not in the British Museum catalogue; WorldCat lists a copy in the Spanish national library, and there is also a copy at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris.

[uniform with:] Les Rieurs anglais, ou Supplément a l’Encyclopédie comique, traduction libre de l’anglais. Paris: Marchand, An X [1801/2]. 2 vols bound together, pp. [4], viii, [4], 132; [4], 156, [4],20, including half-titles, plus engraved frontispiece to each volume.

4 vols bound in 2, 12mo (175 × 95 mm), partially uncut. Later red straight grain quarter morocco, spines elaborately gilt (by Champs-Stroobants Sr). Excellent copies.

First edition. A rare collection of comic extracts translated or abridged from English authors including: Shakespeare, Gay, Johnson, Milton, Sheridan, Fielding, Goldsmith, Richardson, Young, Smollett, Sterne and Swift. Bertin (1751-1819) had worked in England as a tutor and translator and was the author of some 50 works on various subjects, including several translations. While in England he had studied Samuel Taylor’s system of shorthand and published, in 1791 a French edition of An Essay intended to establish a Standard for a universal System of Stenography, successfully introducing modern shorthand to the French public. Encyclopédie comique and Les Rieurs anglais are partly adverts for this system, with their shorthand plates and supplement entitled ‘Dissertation critique et curieuse sur l‘Okigraphie’. The second volume of Encyclopédie comique has a frontispiece depicting an English ‘Wife Sale’ (vente d’une femme Angloise à l’encan) which illustrates a short account of this peculiarly English custom or ritual observed in rural or working-class communities. ‘It can be seen as a bleak transaction, or as street-theatre, or as a shaming ritual’ (E. P. Thompson, ‘Sale of Wives’ in Customs in Common, 1993, p. 447).� Gay II, 98 (first work only); Rochedieu, Bibliography of French Translations of English Works, 1700-1800, Appendix III (Collections of works translated from the English), 30.

First Dublin edition, printed in the same year as the first (London) edition. The ten letters comprise: On the First Principles of Religion; On the Study of the holy Scriptures (2); On the Regulation of the Heart and Affections (2); On the Government of the Temper; On Oeconomy; On Politeness and Accomplishments; On Geography and Chronology; On the Manner of Reading and Course of reading History. It is dedicated to Elizabeth Montagu. ‘Montagu encouraged Chapone, presumably in the summer of 1770, when the two friends were travelling in Scotland, to publish the letters on education she had been sending her niece since 1765. Chapone was grateful to Montagu for correcting the manuscript, and the text, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1773), was Chapone’s most celebrated work’ (Oxford DNB). It ran to many editions over several decades. ESTC: BL, Cambridge, NLI, Bodley and National Trust (Florence Court, Enniskillen, N.I.). No US copies of this edition.

A superb collection which includes 24 large watercolours of fashionable interiors in houses and hotels in Pisa, Lucca, Nice, Tours, Lyon (and one in Saint Petersburg). Richly coloured and detailed these are wonderful visual accounts of contemporary European taste in interior design. Ceiling and wall mouldings, chimney pieces and window frames are rendered in painstaking detail, as are a wide range of furnishings and fabrics, together with domestic articles such as clocks, mirrors, musical instruments, albums, books, prints and pictures. Fabrics, carpets and wall hangings are especially carefully treated, with details of patterns and textures faithfully recorded. The number of books and albums adorning shelves and tabletops is notable, giving an impression of a leisured and cultivated milieu.
The images are generously proportioned, usually more than 20 cms high and between 25 and 30 cms wide (some are larger). All are probably by the same hand, unsigned, leaving us to search for clues among the captions to the identity of the artist. One refers to the house of ‘My Grandfather Sir Coote’ while two of the pencil drawings are recognisable as the Coote family seat at Ballyfin, Leinster, Ireland. One watercolour refers to ‘ma chambre’ suggesting the watercolours are personal records of a series of visits and stays in popular winter and summer holiday spots, some with prominent hosts. Some images have the captions in pencil on their backs, in a very shaky hand, which have evidently been transcribed when the pictures were pasted into this album, perhaps c. 1860.
Some of the interiors are unpopulated (and have an eerie quality) while others have well-dressed figures sitting and standing, conversing, reading or drawing. Several faces recur, notably a mustachioed man with longish hair, who might possibly be the artist or a relative. The Anglo-Irish Coote family owned Ballyfin, which became one of the finest mansions in Ireland, from the early nineteenth century and the 9th Baronet, Sir Charles Coote (d. 1864, likely to be the grandfather mentioned in the caption) was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford and was frequently on the continent. He had five sons and two daughters, and presumably many grandchildren — one of whom may have been the artist here. It is possible that the additional pencil drawings (1, 28 and 29) are in different hands.

1. Pencil caricature ‘The honorable général William Rerelinson’ [sic], signed ‘Vte. R. de Querelly’. (360 × 240 mm), edges creased and slightly frayed.
2. Portrait of a young girl, untitled (295 × 215 mm).
3. Interior, untitled, but a variant of the following view (126 × 160 mm).
4. Caza Leoli - à Pise (126 × 160 mm), closed tear (56 mm) no loss, slightly creased.
5. Salon au quai du Midi [?Nice] (238 × 180 mm), slight loss at upper corners.
6. Un salon d’Hôtel - 1842. à Tours (230 × 220 mm).
7. Eté 1842 Maison Viallon (La Mulatière, Lyon) (235 × 280 mm).
8. Salon de la Maison Gilly à la Croix de Marbre (Nice) Hiver 1842 et 1843 - Eté 1846 (246 × 342 mm).
9. Pise - Palais Leoli - Salon. Hiver 1843 et 1844 (235 × 298 mm).
10. Eté 1844. Bagni di Lucca (225 × 318 mm).
11. Eté 1845. Viareggio (230 × 280 mm).
12. Salon. Chez le Prince Méncherski (238 × 310 mm).
13. Maison Marchet (204 × 274 mm).
14. [Another version of the above, untitled] (216 × 275 mm).
15. [Untitled interior with woman reading by a fireside] (250 × 362 mm).
16. Maison de Roubion (215 × 250 mm).
17. Maison Gilly (246 × 340 mm).
18. [Untitled interior, a gentleman seated, in a dressing gown, verso caption ‘ma chambre’] (124 × 146 mm).
19. Hiver 1844 - 1845 - 1846 à Pise (234 × 314 mm).
20. Maison Gilly (Adrien) à Nice - Croix de Marbre - Eté 1846 (227 × 295 mm).
21. [Untitled, an opulent interior] (188 × 262 mm).
22. Maison Ambroise Tiranty - Nice (Hiver 1846-1847) (246 × 300 mm).
23. Viareggio (228 × 284 mm).
24. Petersbourg - Caserne des Chevaliers Gardes (250 × 349 mm), 2 short tears to right border, no loss.
25. Chambre de mon Gd Père Sir Coote à Nice (288 × 224 mm).
26. Maison Maselet [or Maschet] (170 × 245 mm).
27. Photograph, view of Nice (216 × 275 mm).
28. Pencil drawing [Ballyfin House, Leinster, Ireland] (270 × 375 mm).
29. Pencil drawing [Ballyfin House, Leinster, Ireland] (180 × 276 mm).

Slavery in France was abolished during the Revolution, but was reintroduced by Napoleon in 1804 and not finally abolished until 1838. In April 1826 Charles X had signed a treaty formally recognising the independence of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and it seems likely that these notes were written for a speech given shortly after that date. Barante notes that some viewed the treaty as an act of submission, but he states that the king and the negotiators who signed the treaty had ‘une horreur sincère pour cet infame trafic’ and that the loss of the colony was no threat to France. In the light of the treaty, Barante believes that this was a favourable moment to advance the cause of abolition. Towards the end he refers to the famous saying of Robespierre: ‘Périssent les colonies plutôt qu’un principe’ (though he simply writes ‘périsse les colonies...’ here) but he goes on ‘ces paroles sont atroces — le premier de tous les principes est l’horreur du crime... Cependant ce principe auquel on faisait des sacrifices humains était un principe et de cruauté’. For Barante therefore the fight against the injustice and cruelty of the slave trade is of the highest importance, and these eight pages clearly reveal his humanity and support for the cause of abolition.
Prosper de Barante (1782-1866), a prominent liberal voice in nineteenth-century France was variously a diplomat, politician, statesman, historian and writer. From 1807-9 he was a ‘sous préfet’ in the department of Ardèche, and from 1813-15 prefect of Loire-Inférieure at Nantes. He made several diplomatic visits to Spain and Poland and was a close friend of liberal thinker Benjamin Constant. He was also a member of the Coppet group in the circle of Madame de Staël.

It deals with the various attempts to frame legislation on human rights from the English Bill of Rights of 1688, the Rights of Man in the American Revolution, the French Revolution, to his own time. He examines each and discusses the difficulties of framing a Declaration of the Rights of Man. This manuscript was evidently the basis of his essay ‘Déclarations des droits de l’homme et du citoyen’ published in Études littéraires et historiques (1858).

Prosper de Barante (1782-1866) a prominent liberal voice in nineteenth-century France was variously a diplomat, politician, statesman, historian and writer. From 1807-9 he was a ‘sous préfet’ in the department of Ardèche, and from 1813-15 prefect of Loire-Inférieure at Nantes. He made several diplomatic visits to Spain and Poland and was a close friend of liberal thinker Benjamin Constant. He was also a member of the Coppet group in the circle of Madame de Staël.

First edition of this important act acknowledging the success of John Harrison’s ‘H4’ chronometer in the accurate calculation of longitude, among the most important scientific breakthroughs of the eighteenth century. ‘And whereas the Utility of the Invention of the said John Harrison has been proved by a late Voyage to Jamaica, under the Directions of the Commissioners of the Longitude; And whereas the said Commissioners at their Meeting on the Seventeenth Day of August last did adjudge, that by the Trial made of the said Instrument, it was found of considerable Use to the Publick, and did thereupon make an Order for the Payment of the Sum of Two thousand Pounds to the said John Harrison...’

Harrison believed the extraordinary accuracy of his fourth marine chronometer (it lost just five seconds on an 81-day trial to Jamaica) should be enough to win the full £20,000 promised by the British government’s 1714 longitude prize, but the ‘Act for the Encouragement’ insisted on further tests and disclosures. ‘It was intended to enforce the Commissioners’ directions that Harrison make “a full and clear Discovery of the Principles” of his latest timekeeper to eleven named witnesses so that the details could be published in order to allow other clockmakers to reproduce the designs. Once these witnesses or the majority of them certified that Harrison had done so, then the Treasurer of the Navy was to pay the clockmaker £5000...’ (Baker). The 1763 Act for the Encouragement is the first official government acknowledgement that the revolutionary H4 chronometer had succeeded, but it took Harrison most of the rest of his life to extract the prize money from the Board of Longitude, despite his publication of An Account of the Proceedings in order to the Discovery of Longitude in 1763 (see Printing and the Mind of Man, 208).

Several copies of this act have appeared at auction in recent years (notably the Streeter Library copy sold by Christie’s in New York for $14,400 in 2007) almost always physically disbound from complete sessional volumes of the Acts of Parliament. Though separately published with a general title (as here) individual acts were almost always bound together in yearly volumes as their pagination dictated — our copy is preserved in such a yearly volume with 24 other acts. Acts of this era were printed in limited numbers, usually estimated at around 1100 copies only. Baker, ‘Longitude Acts’ in Longitude Essays, Cambridge Digital Library, accessed June 2021. ESTC records just 8 copies of the act (3 in the UK, 5 in the US) and Worldcat adds a small handful more, though copies are under-recorded since they are often (especially in the UK) catalogued within volumes and sets of the Acts of Parliament.

A RARE FRENCH BROADSIDE ADVERTISING THE VIRTUES OF ‘SCOTCH PILLS’ OR ‘GRANA ANGELICA’ invented by the seventeenth-century Edinburgh physician Patrick Anderson, a medical treatment which remained popular in Scotland, England and France well into the nineteenth century. The long text in twelve chapters outlines the supposed virtues of the pills as a cure for almost any complaint. This French version imitates the English broadsides of the second half of the eighteenth century (there are several in ESTC) which themselves mimicked the form of Royal proclamations with woodcut arms at the head. It also reproduces the purported trademark of Anderson and his successor Isabelle Inglish, which seems to have been pirated as often as the pills themselves.

‘Some time after 1625 Anderson was appointed physician to Charles I. In 1635 he published in Edinburgh Grana angelica, a treatise in Latin which puffed his mild aperient pills, made with aloes, colocynth, and gamboge, and pronounced a sovereign remedy for cleansing the system after carouses. Anderson claimed to have brought the formula of the pill back from a trip to Venice about 1603’. (Oxford DNB).

A regimental account book preserved in the owner’s army ‘hussif’ — a coarse canvas roll with pockets for essential personal items (such as papers, pencils or needlework materials).

It belonged to one Thomas Olney of Northamptionshire serving with the 1st Batallion Rifle Brigade (soldier 1718) successively at Corfu and the Cape of Good Hope and lastly garrisoned at Walmer (Kent). Issued to all serving soldiers, the officia account book records enlistment, next of kin (in this case a mother), distinguishing features, kit issue and payments, which are written into printed columns prefaced by rules and regulations for engagement and conduct. Enlisted for a bounty of £3 17 shilling and sixpence Olney (of the village of Weedon) was issued with a knapsack, towels, shirts, stockings, a holdall, cutlery, shaving kit, a forage cap and strap, webbing, a shell jacket and a clothes brush. After service abroad he seems to have been furloughed in 1851, and the last record here is from Walmer in 1852. Though fairly lightly completed the book evidently travelled everywhere with its owner, folded into its canvas roll case, the lower parchment cover sometime removed by him. An evocative item.

A spectacular renaissance illustrated book, the first edition with the detailed and dramatic double-page etched plates by Jost Amman. First published at Lyon in 1529 with single-page woodcuts (reprinted with the same woodcuts in 1546) there were also Venice editions of 1569, 1571 and 1576 with quarter-page woodcuts.

A vast encyclopaedic work, the Catalogus gloriae mundi sought to set out the hierarchy of creation —animate and inanimate, from the heavens themselves to the governments, laws and sciences of humanity. Its particular value was in setting out orders of precedency and protocol in law and ceremony, which probably accounts for its interest to publisher Sigmund Feyerabend, who enlisted Amman to create large emblematic plates for this edition, derived from the earlier woodcut illustrations. They are:

1. A genealogy with insignia of royal houses (including European houses and those of Persia, Egypt, Israel etc); 2. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; 3. a mandala depicting the ranks of the hierarchy of the heavens; 4. a sitting of the papal court; 5. an imperial council; 6. a regal council; 7. a judicial court; 8. the nobility; 9. the military ranks; 10. The liberal arts and sciences (14 female personifications); 11. the mechanical arts (7 female personifications); 12. a geocentric cosmography. Andresen, A. Jost Amman, 32-43; The New Hollstein: German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts 1400-1700, 1998, VI.144. A very scarce book. Worldcat lists non-European copies at Folger, Getty and Huntington libraries only.

First edition of Le Normand’s panegyric for Alexander I and her prophecies for the state of Russia following the Emperor’s death in 1825. Marie-Anne Lenormand (1772–1843) was a celebrated (or notorious) clairvoyant, publisher, 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.

The title verso here gives a list of Le Normand’s other prophesies, both published and forthcoming. Though the half-title verso bears an author’s statement, requiring authorised copies to be signed by her, this copy is unsigned (though genuine).