Search

Number 104 of 150 numbered copies of this facsimile edition of Estève’s remarkable, near-miniature wartime sketchbook (1939-1940), with introductory booklet by Françoise Chapon. Estève (1904-2001) was essentially self-taught, working under the clear influence of Cézanne and Braque, and hovering between representation and abstraction. His wartime notebook is a truly exceptional representation of a French soldier’s experience, superbly reproduced here by Éditions des Cendres.

A superb survey of turn-of-the century British domestic architecture by an important French photographer who used cyanotype to notable effect. These examples of seaside ‘cottages’ in East Kent and Sussex depicts an array of then recently constructed high quality houses, a good number of which survive. Broadly within the Arts and Crafts tradition, the houses fuse a variety of older English vernacular styles with modern innovations, notably in the range of moulded and cut bricks and tiles.

Albert Lévy (1847-1931) was both a pioneering and prolific architectural photographer, unusual for his time in working on both sides of the Atlantic, with studios in Paris and New York. Characteristically, his collections were issued as cyanotypes printed directly from the original glass negatives. His collections included numerous sequences of French, British and American buildings of the Gilded Age, but are now very rare indeed. Jisc locates no UK copies. FirstSearch locates US copies at Columbia, Princeton and Lawrence Technological University only.

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 and 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 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 raise 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 process was introduced to America by Charles Saint-Mémin.

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.

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.

A charming book-form trinket box, a ‘blook’ of unknown manufacture, but with other examples known to have been marketed in London in the late nineteenth-century. The monogram reads ‘M.S.’ and the reference is probably to Mary Queen of Scots, given the all-over thistle pattern. Mary was executed in 1587 and so it is possible that these boxes were in some way marketed at the time of the three-hundredth anniversary.

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 almost certainly 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).

Long before its echo in Dostoevsy’s Crime and Punishment (1866), Beccaria’s work left its mark on Russian culture. It was enthusiastically read (in French) by Catherine the Great while codifying her own celebrated legal manifesto, Nakaz, of 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 Beccaria 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 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.

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.

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).