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Sole edition of this bibliographical catalogue of 210 printed works issued at the time of the Estates General of 1614-15, comprising official documents, memoirs, counsels, petitions, harangues, discussions of the death of Henry IV, arrêts du Parlement, pasquinades and satires. Each entry includes a line or two of commentary. An advisory body representing the three estates in France, the Estates General had met periodically from the middle ages to 1614, which proved to be its last assembly for over 150 years. As France headed towards revolution, the Estates General was summoned as a desperate measure in May 1789 on the model of the 1615 assembly—doubtless the occasion of this rare little bibliography. Conlon, 89, 1275. Though Conlon provides an NUC reference, OCLC lists no US copies. COPAC lists the BL copy only.

First edition of the author’s first two plays. De Belloy began his career as an actor with a company of comédiens touring Northern Europe and found favour at the court of the Empress Elizabeth at St Petersburg. It was there in 1757 that he wrote his first play, then entitled Le Triomphe de l’amitié, which was performed in Paris as Titus on his return in 1761. It was not a success, but de Belloy followed it with Zelmire in 1762 to much greater acclaim. The tale of a princess of the Isle of Lesbos, it was drawn from Metastasio (as was Titus) and was later the source of Rossini’s Zelmira (1822). De Belloy’s major success, Le Siège de Calais followed in 1765.

This is the only single-sheet version of The Shopkeeper turned Sailor listed by ESTC, which records no further parts in this format, though it was issued in several chapbook issued by the Cheap Repository.

Sole edition, printed for the author. In verse with English translation in prose, on facing pages. Composed in the aftermath of the Duke’s fatal stabbing on the steps of the Paris Opera by an anti-monarchist Bonapartist, Louis Pierre Louvel. Noel de Quersonnières (1728-1845) formerly commissaire-général of the French armies was reputed to have died at the age of 116, though his dates suggest he only reached 106.

There appear to be two issues: for the English and French market respectively. The first contains a ‘Discours preliminaire’ explaining the translation, with a printed section title to the verso of the title. The second (ours) does not have the section title printed on the title verso and the leaves of the ‘Discours’ are cancelled (hence the apparent mispagination of the prelims in this issue). WorldCat BL, BN and Newberry Library only. The BL copy is of the first issue.

First Carrington edition, one of 440 copies on handmade paper (of a total edition of 515), this copy with the pasted overslip on the title reading: ‘Important notice. The present translation was done direct from the original Latin by “Sebastian Melmoth” (Oscar Wilde).’ --- a spurious claim. With its overtly homosexual themes, the Satyricon, was certainly important to Wilde (he even refers to it explicitly in A Picture of Dorian Gray) but Carrington’s scurrilous claim has always been disputed. It is only relatively recently, however, that an explicit retraction forced upon Carrington was found in an insert published (ironically) with his 1909 edition of Dorian Gray. Only a proportion of the edition contains the overslip pasted over Carrington’s name. In our copy the final advert leaf with colophon giving the printer’s name has been carefully and deliberately removed, perhaps before binding. The binding here is identical to that of the Eccles copy preserved in the British Library, thus suggestive of a publisher’s binding. Boroughs, R., ‘Oscar Wilde’s Translation of Petronius: The Story of a Literary Hoax,’ English Literature in Transition: 1880—1920 38, p. 9-49. Bn Catalogue: ‘Dans un de ses catalogues de vente, n° 5, Charles Carrington, l'éditeur, propose sous le n° 1403 un ouvrage qui semble identique, en attribuant dans le corps de la notice le travail à un "Oxford M.A.", avec en note : "Traduction attribuée à l'esthète célèbre le feu Oscar Wilde". On notera cependant que, dans la correspondance publiée, les deux seules allusions faites au "Satyricon" sont relatives au dossier de presse de "Dorian Gray", ouvrage dont Carrington avait acquis le copyright. De même il ne semble pas que les éléments d'apparat critique, "Introduction, Synopsis of the plot, List of books used", permettent de remonter jusqu'à un article d'Oscar Wilde sur ce sujet. Par contre Mason, "Bibliography"... n° 336, signale un encart de l'édition, publiée en 1909 par Charles Carrington, de "Picture of Dorian Gray"... indiquant qu'il n'attribuait plus ni la traduction de Pétrone ni celle de Barbey d'Aurevilly, à Wilde.

A very rare spurious edition of these erotic and bawdy poems by Burns and his circle, first published in 1799 (of which edition only 2 copies are known to survive). The title-page is headed ‘Not for maids, ministers or striplings’. The Roy collection of Robert Burns contains several similar reprints to ours (including our issue) each with differing title-pages giving ‘1827’.

‘Shepherds I have got the clap,
Stroking of my Anna;
My time’s filled up, oh sad mishap,
With taking salts and senna.
I for her King’s Place forsook,
Where girls I had past telling;
But now my pipe’s turned to a crook,
My b—, how they’re hanging...’ Roy collection of Robert Burns, p. 141 b.

First edition of this important parallel English, Latin and Greek version. It followed a poor piracy of 1882 badly translated from Liseux’s French edition of 1882. Carrington gave a wry veiled account of its publication in his 1902 catalogue, Forbidden Books: ‘Were I a bookseller, I do not think I should ever take the trouble to print such a book as I have now before me. Here is a Latin work, full of notes, and bristling with Greek quotations. A most careful and masterly translation has been placed opposite every page of the original text, and it needs no literary critic to see that no one but a real classical scholar—an old Oxford man—could ever have successfully struggled with such a task... The two stout volumes have evidently been printed on the Continent—and for very good and valid reasons, as no English printer would dare to undertake such a work,— therefore each page would have to be submitted to the translator, at least three or four times, foreign compositors working mechanically. Many months would thus pass in wearisome proof-reading, and when at last the hundred copies are struck off, and each man receives his due, what margin of profit awaits the silly bookseller-publisher? He is insulted in every way and laughed at if he dares to wonder that the British Customs seize any copies...’

Carrington published some 300 titles (some using his own name and others using false imprints, as here) mainly in Paris where he lived from about 1894 until 1907, selling books from a shop in the Faubourg Montmartre. He notably printed a number of works by Oscar Wilde when few other publishers would risk implication in Wilde’s downfall and, besides outright pornography, he printed a number of editions of classical and oriental authors and important works on the psychology of sex. In 1907 he was deported from France for consistently publishing and selling literature “of a very obscene and vulgar character”. He continued his publishing business in Brussels before returning to Paris in 1912. By 1920 Carrington was blind from the effects of advanced syphilis, being admitted to the mental hospital at Ivry, south of Paris, where he died in 1921.

1. NORDENDORF, C.C. de. Attack Step Quickstep. Danville (Va.): Mrs E. L. Nordendorf, [1865]. Not found in OCLC.

2. SCHILLING, Fred[erick]. Brothers hasten on to Battle. Brooklyn: D.S. Holmes, [1864]. OCLC: Lincoln Presidential Library only.

3. DOANE, Howard. Bury me in the Valley. Cincinnati: John Church, [n.d.]. OCLC: Ohio State University only [possibly another edition].

4. MCNAUGHTON, J.H. The faded Coat of Blue or the nameless Grave. Ballad. Buffalo, Penn & Remington, [1865]. Stain to lower margins. OCLC: UC Santa Barbara and Library Company of Philadelphia.

5. CLARK, James C. Fremont’s Battle Hymn. Quartett. Rochester: Joseph P. Shaw, [1863]. Not found in OCLC.

6. PARKHURST, Mrs. E. A. Funeral March, to the Memory of Abraham Lincoln, the Martyr President of the United States of America. New York: Horace Waters, 1865. Advert on final page cropped (with some loss) at foot. Issue without vignette portrait.

7. MACK, E. General McClellan’s Grand March. Philadelphia, Lee & Walker [1861]. Issue without coloured lithograph plate. OCLC: Michigan, Duke, Pennsylvania and Brown Universities.

8. WINNER, Septimus. Give us back our old Commander. Philadelphia, Winner & Co, [1862]. OCLC: LC and Morgan.

9. EASTBURN, The hearty Welcome Home. Philadelphia: Smith, 1865. OCLC: no copies of Smith imprint but 2 of Auner: AAS and NYHS and one of Johnson imprint: NYHS.

10. BECKEL, J. C. Monody on the death of Abraham Lincoln. Sixteenth President of the United States. Born Feb. 12th, 1808, died by the hand of an assassin April 15th, 1865. Philadelphia: Marsh, 1865. OCLC: this issue Lincoln Museum only plus one copy of a Cincinnati imprint of same year at Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

11. WHEELOCK, O. Richmond Falls, the War is O’er: Philadelphia: March, 1865. No hard copy found in OCLC.

12. CASONELLA. A Song of Peace. New York, W. A. Pond, 1865. OCLC: UPenn, Ocean State, Brigham Young, AAS.

A complete autograph manuscript of one of De Kock’s acutely observed novels of gritty Parisian life. In Le Tourlourou (1837) Marie, a young barmaid, is the object of a strange case of mistaken identity when a letter arrives from a countess seeking ‘l’objet de mes plus chères affections’. Marie assumes the letter refers to her and is thrilled with the possibility of a secret admirer, but when she finds out the Countess is merely asking after an item of lost property, she is distraught and throws herself into the Canal Saint-Martin. She is saved by a young man who has previously tried to gain her affections, and the two are married.
The Oxford Companion to French Literature describes De Kock (1794-1871) as ‘the prolific and immensely popular author of rollicking, risky, or more often frankly coarse, frequently sentimental and fundamentally good-natured novels.’ Certainly prolific, De Kock published over 100 novels, which attained celebrity in translation, especially in American and British editions (of which it has been wryly noted that the prose was much improved by translation). This manuscript certainly gives the impression of rollicking speed in composition — this is not a fair copy, and while there are many deletions and emendations, these seem not to have detained the author for long.

This French adaptation of Machiavelli’s fable Belfagor arcidiavolo (’The Devil takes a Wife’) was probably the version used by La Fontaine for the fable Belphégor he included in the last volume of his Fables (1693). Le Fèvre’s version had first appeared in a very rare edition of 1661 (OCLC lists the Bn de France copy only) and this 1664 edition has Le Fèvre’s version of Plutarch’s Theseus added. The printer and place of publication has been deduced from copies in which it is bound with Le Fèvre’s Les Poètes grecs (also 1664).

Classicist Tanneguy Le Fèvre had been inspector of the Imprimerie royale at the Louvre before his appointment as professor at the protestant Académie at Saumur. He courted controversy with several of his works, judged libertine by his contemporaries, notably his biography of Sappho, in which he desisted from censuring her sexuality. Gay, III, 48, cf. Cioranescu 41672 (1661).

First edition, rare, of this collection of children’s songs. Ludovica Brentano, later baroness Desbordes (1787-1854), affectionately known as Lulu, was grand daughter of Sophie von La Roche (the first widely known German female novelist) and she became patron of the Grimm brothers; contributing two tales to their Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Worldcat: NYPL and Harvard in US, BL in UK.

An elegantly produced autograph manuscript in gold ink of Mesnage’s satire in hexasyllables denouncing the arrivistes of the Second Republic. It is apparently unpublished. Born in 1821 at Evron (Mayenne), Mesnage claimed direct descent from Racine and published several poetical works, including Les Fleurs d’Avril (Laval, 1854 of which a copy is included here).

First published in 1747; Madame de Graffigny’s epistolary novel was a best-seller in numerous early editions. This illustrated version, with the addition of the suite entitled Lettres d’Aza (first published 1748), by Ignace Hugary de Lamache-Courmont, bears an approbation dated 14 September 1759 but was first published in 1752. cf. Cohen-De Ricci 447 (1752 edition).

Prévost’s novel Le doyen de Killerine was first published in 1735 and was frequently reprinted. Set in Ireland, it tells the story of the attempts of a worldly Irish priest’s attempts (usually thwarted) to find suitable marriage partners for his siblings. It is full of romantic anguish, especially in dealing with the thorny question of intermarriage between Protestant and Catholic, and was influential in forming the French taste for ‘celtic’ novels which became so prevalent towards the end of the century and in the next. This copy is an early match of a 1760 edition of volume 1 and 1744 editions of the remainder, with slightly different spine tooling, unified by matching labels (presumably c. 1760). cf. Cioranescu 51276-7 (1735 and 1740 editions).

Second edition (printed in the same year as the first) of her historical novel on the reign of Louis XIII, who she revered for his piety and whose reputation she sought to rehabilitate in France. Cioranescu 30670.

First printed in 1678, with numerous reprints, a milestone in the history of European fiction, generally considered the first historical novel and the first psychological novel. Eschewing the fantastic rhetoric of other seventeenth-century authors such as Madeleine de Scudéry, and the excesses of heroic romance, La Fayette preferred to explore the realities of human emotion when exposed to love and jealousy and told a remarkably modern story of a virtuous young wife who suppressed her passion for a nobleman in the name of honour and duty. In so doing, La Fayette launched the ‘novel of character’ as a genre, in which the character of the protagonists is more important than the events of the plot. Set in the previous century during the reign of Henri II and with carefully researched historical detail, the novel nevertheless pursues themes of individuality and public expectation absolutely contemporary to its author’s times. After La Fayette, writers of French novels continued to be preoccupied with the realistic analysis of love, but none of their productions can compare with Princesse de Clèves until perhaps Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782).

Second edition (first 1779) of Tressan’s free translation, a version which turned the sixteenth-century chivalric romance into a hugely-popular French novel. cf. Cioranescu 62210 (1779 edition).

First edition in Italian of Théis’ popular Voyage de Polyclète (1821) written in the mould of the travels of Anacharsis as an introduction to ancient Roman customs and antiquities.

First edition in French of Carl Engelmanns Tagebuch (1800) from Lafontaines’ Familiengeschichten series (1797-1804), translated by novelist Isabelle de Montolieu. Lafontaine’s didactic tales of domestic life, though now little remembered, were among the most-read German novels of the day. OCLC: Bibliothèque Sainte-Genviève, Indiana and Penn State only.

First edition of Genlis’ historical novel, full of overt analogies to the upheavals of the Revolution, written during Genlis’ exile and offered as a sequel to Les Veillées du Château. It appeared in English in a translation by James Beresford as The Knights of the Swan in 1796 (printed for J. Johnson). A measure of its remarkable currency in the literature of the following century is provided by its cameo appearance in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. On an occasion when Prince Andrew visited General Kutuzof, ‘He found him reclining in an armchair, still in the same unbuttoned overcoat. He had in his hand a French book which he closed as Prince Andrew entered, marking the place with a knife. Prince Andrew saw by the cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis’ (X, chapter 16). Cioranescu, 30617; Martin, Mylne & Frautschi, Bibliographie du genre romanesque français, 1751-1800, 95.20.