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First published in 1738, Soumille’s illustrated guide to trictrac (a variant of the game of backgammon) was reprinted several times in the eighteenth century, the present 1756 edition probably being the second (another edition appeared at Avignon in the same year). This copy contains a delightful contemporary first person ex libris inscription giving voice to the book itself:
‘je suis a qui je suis, a autre ne veut être, et si perdut je suis promtement je veux être remit a qui je suis Alexandre est mon maïtre’. (’I belong to who I belong to; I do not wish to belong to another, and if I am lost, I want to be promptly returned to the one I belong to. Alexandre is my master.’) Barbier II, 565.

First edition with the English text of the Preparatoirlyk plan, van een tractaat van commercie (Plan of a Treaty of Commerce) projected between Holland and the United States. Though never concluded it is important as one of the earliest treaty negotiations by the American nation after the Revolution. The plan had been secretly negotiated at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1778 between William Lee, American commissioner to Berlin and Jean de Neufville, an Amsterdam banker professing to act on behalf of the city and was to be concluded when England acknowledged America as a free nation. A detailed treaty it contains thirty four articles outlining terms of trade between the two nations, and the form of passports and certificates for ships. It is subscribed Jean de Neufville and Samuel W. Stockton, the American lawyer, diplomat and public servant who was later to serve as Secretary of State of New Jersey from 1794 to 1795. It is followed by transcriptions (also in Dutch and English) of the associated diplomatic correspondence. An edition of the Dutch text only appeared also in 1780 which Sabin (65110) refers to as the ‘Original edition’, though it is not clear on what basis.
The draft was inadvertently made public in 1780 when the vessel in which the bearer of it, Henry Laurens, South Carolina merchant, planter, and revolutionary leader who served as President of the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1778 was apprehended at sea by the English. The Plan was found among the effects he threw overboard on his capture and Laurens was imprisoned for treason. The treaty was not strictly illegal, but the British Government was able to construe it and other retrieved papers detailing Dutch financial aid to the rebellious American colonies as being equivalent to actual aggression. Although it was neither authorised nor sanctioned by the States-General nor by Congress, it served as a pretext for England’s declaration of war against the Netherlands.
It was handed to the Dutch Estates General by the British Ambassador, General Joseph Yorke, debated and published here as one of the Extracts of the resolutions of the Estates General of the Netherlands. Sabin 63286: ‘Official edition of the Preparatory Plan’ (projected 1778 at Aix-la-Chapelle), with the correspondence relating to it, as it was presented by the Chev. Yorke, as found with the papers of Mr. Laurens, to the Prince of Orange, and sent by the States General to the Provinces. The subscription of the Treaty is changed in all the reproductions — Müller’. Cf. Sabin 65110 for the original Dutch edition (two editions, also 1780).

A popular pocket dream dictionary abridged from Vulson de la Colombière’s influential Le Palais des curieux first published in 1660 and widely disseminated in popular form. The foot of the final page includes a series of numbers offered as the most likely to be drawn in the national lottery. Many of the dream interpretations are familiar (loosing teeth signfiying death, a rainbow in the East, good fortune, white horse, joy and so on) while other motifs are more bizarre (seeing one intestines eaten by someone else, seeing harpies flying in the air, kissing a dead person, for example). René Helot, La Bibliothèque bleue en Normandie (1928). 12

First edition. Copies of Louis XVI’s will were widely circulated in facsimile at the time of the Restoration of the monarchy after the fall of Napoleon. They were first printed as official copies engraved from the original manuscripts, circulated to members of the houses of representatives and issued for sale, as here in their officially sanctioned version engraved directly by Piquet from tracings of the original manuscript. The final page of the four-page facsimile of Louis’ will bears the imprint: ‘Calqué par Pierre Picquet sur l’original écrit de la main du Roi’. Picquet is described as ‘graveur d’écritures’ in the imprint, a speciality for which he appears to enjoyed royal patronage. His finely-engraved copies were widely pirated by enterprising engravers and booksellers and sold to the public in Paris in various other forms. Besides his facsimiles, Picquet engraved several writing manuals.
Louis XVI’s last will and testament, written on December 25, 1792, in the Temple prison, is a deeply personal, religious document in which the deposed king proclaimed his innocence, forgave his enemies, and entrusted his family to God. He reaffirmed his Catholic faith, urged his son not to seek revenge for his death, and expressed hope for the unity of France. It is accompanied here by a letterpress account of the king’s last days, together with the circumstances of his and Marie-Antoinette’s will. There are also engraved copies of both their signatures, together with those of their children Élisabeth Marie and Louis (both also executed).

By an otherwise unidentified female artist, this is a rare large-format album of lithographs of the famous catholic Bavarian passion play at Oberammergau. The artist’s name is given only as initials ‘M. C. S. D’ on the plates and wrapper, but this copy bears a contemporary manuscript addition to the initials, which thus reads ‘M. C. S. Dawkins done by Herself’. It is additionally inscribed ‘with love’ to Major M. G. Best.
Performed decennially since 1634, the Oberammergau plays told the story of Christ’s passion, with a large cast drawn from local villages forming immense tableaux vivants with spoken biblical texts in the vernacular. In the nineteenth century it became a major attraction for well-to-do Grand Tourists and drew significant numbers of English visitors (so much so that the pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook established an Oberammergau office in 1880). The passion play was widely reported in contemporary English-language journals, adding to its attraction among English visitors (mainly protestant) who were curious about this ancient catholic theatrical tradition. We have been unable to discover anything substantial about the artist, but its fair to assume she made the journey to Oberammergau herself. WorldCat lists the V&A copy only in the UK. In the US there are copies at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake (IL) and WRHS (OH).

A rare and outlandish canard depicting a winged harpie, with the caption ‘Ce monstre afreux son corps est de la force d’un taureau / d’un an il a vingt deux pieds de longueur’.
This is a version of several contemporary ‘Peruvian monster’ prints issued as satirical allusions to Marie Antoinette, who was widely accused of accused of rapaciously squandering the royal treasury. They were inspired by a pamphlet of 1784 titled Description historique d’un monstre symbolique pris vivant sur les bords du lac Fagua près de Santa Fé par les soins de Francisco Xaveiro de Meunrios, comte de Barcelone — the pseudonym Francisco Xaveiro de Meunrios probably referring to Louis Stanislas Xavier, Count of Provence, Louis XVI’s brother. Harpie prints then appeared in considerable number (the Bibliothèque nationale holds at least thirteen, most printed in Paris, a number of which are dated to 1784) and were popular in both Paris and other French cities. Not found in WorldCat or among the similar prints in the BnF.

A Caen-printed bibliothèque bleue edition of a title popular in the genre, with other editions from Paris, Tours and Lyons. The woodcut portrait was evidently old when the edition was printed, the impression showing a scatter of wormholes affecting La Belle Hélaine’s face, hair and shoulders. The text has it origins in a Middle French chanson de geste of the fourteenth century. cf. Hélot, La Bibliothèque bleue en Normandie (1928), 114 noting the degradation of the woodcut over its several issues, and this one specifically where: ‘la pauvre belle devient effrayante, avec un véritable trou à la place de l’oeil gauche’.

A popular history of the Norman crusader king who became Richard I of England. Hélot, 124.

A life of the Northern French Saint Ortaire, abbot of Landelles (d. 580 AD). Ortaire was the object of pilgrimages to Bas-Bézier, and was invoked in the cure of various illnesses and credited with miraculous cures. The approbation is dated 1706, referring to the source work Abregé de la Vie du Bienheureux Saint Ortaire, not the present chapbook (though it appears incorrectly with this early date in various online catalogues). Frère, Manuel du bibliographe normand, II, p. 507; Hélot, 265.

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

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.

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, Mesdames de la Lafayette, de Sévigné, du Chatelet, de Graffigny, Riccoboni, de Genlis, and de Duras. This complete edition of 1828 is rare.

First edition, rare, of these collected sermons by a French Huguenot emigré pastor in Dublin. Two significant sermons are on the subject of religious toleration, and the moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson is named among the subscribers.
The first to sermons are entitled ‘Contre l’Intolerance’ and ‘Les justes bornes de la Tolerance’. The Toleration Act had been enacted in Ireland in 1719, granting Dissenters (but not Catholics) freedom of worship and the subject of religious toleration was widely debated. Caillard argues that not only was intolerance immoral, but also 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. This 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.’ (see Toleration in 18th century Ireland, Irish Philosophy.com)
The book includes a subscriber’s list of men and women, of both Irish, French and other extraction, including 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 later 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 of this rare manual for Giacometti’s evolution of the game of chess Il Giuoco della guerra which uses a board game format to teach the principles of military strategy, tactics, and fortification. It belongs to a genre of military games that developed in Europe during the eighteenth century — precursors to the Prussian Kriegsspiel and of modern board-based wargames. The pieces had names such as ‘generals’, ‘cannons’, ‘mortars’ and fortresses’. The engraved plate, dedicated by Pietro Remondini to the Cavaliere Brancaleone shows the field of battle, with double chess boards, separated by a symbolic river, all within an elaborate classical border of panelled friezes. The engraved frontispiece shows two allegorical female figures representing strategic warfare and honour or victory), flanking a large shield bearing a crowned eagle and a plinth bearing the double-headed image of Janus is behind.
It was reprinted several times and translated into French. WorldCat: Cleveland Public Library, Bodley, Dutch National Library only.

First edition. An extensive survey of the Welsh musical tradition by a celebrated Welsh harpist and antiquary in London. ‘Edward Jones moved to London in 1774 or early 1775, under the patronage of the London Welsh circle. The harp was very fashionable in London at the time, and Jones quickly established himself in some of the most eminent circles as a popular performer and teacher of the instrument’ (ODNB). He became harpist to the prince of Wales (later George IV). Musical and poetical Relicks, a rather costly production with an extensive subscriber’s list, contains a major essay on bardic poetry with texts and songs in both Welsh and English. An engraved plate shows the principal instruments of Welsh music, including the harp and lyre, while the second part of the book mainly comprises engraved music for some 60 Welsh tunes, some Jones’s variations, all on two staves and thus suitable also the keyboard.
‘Jones’s most important work was in the preservation of traditional Welsh music. He collected and published over 200 traditional melodies, many of which he transcribed from having heard them sung and played at home in north Wales. His concern for the protection of Welsh cultural life is also evident in his strong belief in the eisteddfod as a safeguard of Welsh cultural traditions and the purity of the Welsh language. He invariably attended eisteddfodau on his regular summer visits to Wales, often acting as an adjudicator; and on several occasions he provided and presented prizes for competitions such as singing with the harp and the best collection of penillion’.
This copy is from the library of the Dukes of Portland, containing the bookplate of William Arthur, sixth duke of Portland (1857-1943), but with an earlier gilt supralibros denoting the presence of the book in the Portland collection at an earlier date. It is quite likely to have formed part of the celebrated subterranean library collections at Welbeck Abbey of the eccentric John Bentinck fifth duke of Portland. BUCEM, p. 559; RISM J 607.

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 and still one of the most interesting treatments of the themes of race and class in European society in the early nineteenth century. Though continually controversial Ourika is one of the most sophisticated treatments of the construction of social identity and the mechanics of racism.
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.

First edition of the so-called Combination Act, which prohibited trade unions and collective bargaining by British workers. Though separately published with a general title for a complete sitting of Parliament, individual Acts of Parliament were paginated to be bound together in yearly volumes hence the pagination 654-672 here.

Rare first edition of the memoirs of the great circus performer Jules Léotard, pioneer of the flying trapeze who inspired the 1867 song ‘The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze’. A second edition of his Mémoires appeared in the same year, with the same pagination, but giving ‘deuxième édition’ on the title — almost all library copies appear to be of this later edition. The superb comic lithograph by Durandeau shows Léotard trapezing over the city of Paris, while adoring female fans cry out to him from the rooftops (some flying heart-shaped kites). With Blondin, Léotard was one of the first great celebrities of the circus, when he visited London in 1861, Charles Dickens wrote: ‘I have been beguiled into seeing Léotard, and it is at once the most fearful and most graceful thing I have ever seen.’ (Letter to Macready, June 11, 1861).

First edition of this rare offprint from the Gazette des tribunaux reporting the case and outcome surrounding the publication of Marie-Antoinette’s library catalogue, edited by Louis Lacour and printed as Livres du boudoir de la reine Marie Antoinette. Catalogue authentique et original for Jules Gay. Bibliographically and politically fascinating, the case was brought by the state against Lacour and Gay, alleging that the rights to the manuscript catalogue remained with the state, and that Lacour and Gay had sought to publish it for immoral reasons. It seems that it was this second contention that was the primary motive for bringing the case: with the Appendix here explaining that certain monarchical Legitimists had objected to Marie-Antoinette’s name being blackened further through the presentation of her private reading material - the books of the boudoir being widely considered trivial. There is also a discussion of the extent to which the manuscript catalogue really represented the queen’s reading matter, or simply an assemblage of fashionable books. The matter was decided in favour of Lacour and Gay, the former apparently arranging for this offprint - with manuscript dedications at the rear (obliterated in this copy). WorldCat: Bn, BL, Oxford (Law Library) and Michigan.

First edition of a detailed treatise on household management for young women, presented in epistolary form. It was to become very popular, running to several editions by the middle of the century, but the first edition is rare. Starting by establishing the principles of order and economy it proceeds to give advice on a suitable house, its furnishing (with chapters on the dining room, salon, bedrooms for both madame and monsieur, and kitchen). There is information on the linen provision and washing, and choice of fabrics, as well as on personal dress. Two of the longer chapters consider the appointment and operation of the wine cellar (over which the mistress of the house had control) and the kitchen, the latter with a selection of useful recipes and dishes.
Though separately-published, it is one of the volumes of the series Encyclopédie des Dames issued by Audot from 1821, which provided titles useful and interesting to women, all in portable format like this. This copy was apparently a subscriber’s copy, with the half-title bearing the printed statement ‘Exemplaire imprimé pour la Bibliothèque de Mademoiselle Emma de Kolly’, and it is therefore likely that the arms on the upper cover are also hers (though we have been unable to discover anything more about her). WorldCat finds only one copy of the first edition outside continental Europe (University of Michigan).