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Sole edition: tales and snippets based on the argot, gossip and jokes of the Porcherons quartier of Paris, at the foot of the slope to Montmartre. It includes the woeful tale of a young clerk and a prostitute and a Catéchisme poissard. It purports to be the work of a washerwoman, ‘Mame Fanchon’. The term ‘Poissarde’ (literally, a fishwife) refers, in general, to coarse and vulgar language and is frequently to be found in chapbooks of the period. Worlcat: Flanders Heritage Library (Antwerp) only.

First edition in French of the Italianate gothic novel Angelo Guicciardini, or, The Bandit of the Alps: a Romance (London, Colburn 1809). Rare. Sophia Francis’ other novels include: Constance de Lindensdorf, Vivonia and The Nun of Misericordia. They were all popular circulating and subscription library titles. No British copies in Jisc/Library Hub (formerly COPAC), Worldcat: University of Virginia only in US. cf. The Novel in English: a bibliographical Addition to Andrew Block’s The English Novel, 263, a.

A Napeoleonic-era manuscript course in classical and modern French history made for a woman or girl, Caroline Hémart. Probably prepared by a tutor, the texts are enthusiastically neo-classical in tone: the opening ‘Élements de chronologie’ serve as a grounding in ancient history (with definitions of terms such as ‘Olympiade’) of Europe and the near East, based on the text of Napoleonic scholar, Luc de Lancival. The manuscript concludes with 27 stanzas of a heroic poem, ‘Ode à Clio’ by M. Le Comte François de Neufchateau (published c. 1807), which is, again, a glorious version of history seen through still-rosy Napoleonic lenses.

First edition in French of The Castilian, an historical novel in English (Colburn, 1829), by a notable Spanish historical novelist, very much in the vein of Scott. Though most of his novels were in Spanish, Trueba y Cosío had been educated partly in England, and this attempt in English attracted favourable reviews. The translation is by Defauconpret, best known for his translations of Scott. Rare: Worldcat lists the Bn copy only.

A superb art nouveau decorated poetry manuscript, copied and illuminated throughout by a M. Jullien with geometric designs inspired by Renaissance and Islamic tiles, in keeping with the Orientalist symbolism of the 56 poems by Henri de Régnier (1864-1936), a disciple of Mallarmé and one of the most significant French Symbolist poets. The binding is skilfully decorated by Jullien in pyrography. Although we are aware of other decorated manuscripts in his hand, almost nothing more is known of him.�

A rare satirical elegy and epitaph for the celebrated electrical eel, who could no longer rise to the occasion. A reissue of the sheets of the first edition of 1777 with a cancel title, of this elaborate addition to the corpus of salacious 1770s pamphlets devoted to the subject of the electrical eel, a topic of serious scientific enquiry and popular merriment. This one continues the phallic joke and manages to draw in the hapless Chevalier D’Eon (whose sex was then popularly debated) alongside the lecherous Earl of Harrington.

‘If the Gymnotus Electricus, lately exhibited to the Public, be really dead, it is to be hoped that we shall have no more of these witty indecencies’ (Monthly Review, Nov. 1777). ESTC: Harvard and Princeton only worldwide of this issue. ESTC gives the pagination [4], 29, [1], but both the 2 copies reported have only pp [2] before title, as here, though it is perhaps likely the work was issued with a half-title or initial blank not present in surviving copies.

An unusual New Years’ gift from an unnamed compiler ‘for my dearly beloved Isabella Sophia Ochando de la Vanda. January one, 1830’; a manuscript compilation of patriotic verse and pious texts by hymnodist Edmeston, Shepherd, Southey (’The Victory’), Millman, Bowring, Burden, Emmerson, and Carlyle’s ‘Hymn before public worship translated from the Arabic’. Most of the texts are in English but a couple, by the Mechitarian cleric Nerses Clajense, are in Spanish and French respectively.

The two fine watercolours show HMS Victory in battle and a fallen arab horseman.

Gay describes this Le Passe partout as a “recueil de pièces satiriques, dirigées pour la plupart contre la clergé”, with the Jesuites du College de Louis le Grand and Louis XIV's great general, the Maréchal de Villars singled out for special attention. The anonymous author satirically describes himself as “Chevalier de l’Ordre de l’Industrie & de la Gibeciere” (‘chevalier d'industrie’ means swindler in French and ‘gibecièr’ is a gamebag or satchel), but his real identity remains a mystery. This is the second edition. A more common issue with the imprint 'la présente année' is considered variously to have been printed from 1700 to 1708. The BL catalogue suggests Holland as the place of publication for our edition. No source hazards a guess at the author.

First published in 1674, this edition of Traité de la jalousie contains a fine and detailed allegorical frontispiece juxtaposing a family with an image of adultery and an emblem of heart in a vice or press. De Courtin’s work purports to be an early self-help manual which offers practical advice on dealing with jealousy in marriage, which, as the advertisement proclaims: ‘De toutes les maladies de l’esprit, La Jalousie est assurément la plus dangereuse, & la plus difficile à guerir’. It is, in effect, a profoundly misogynistic work insisting on the subordiation of the woman, just as certain members of society must necessarily be subject to the state. Despite being described by Gay as an ‘ouvrage ennuyeux et mal ecrit’, the frequency with which the title was reprinted after its first publication in 1674 is testament to its contemporary popularity. It appeared in English as A Treatise of Jealousie, or, a Means to preserve Peace in Marriage in 1684�

The final work Octavie ou l'Epouse fidelle was first published in 1683; this imprint is not dated, but other undated copies are suggested to have been published c.1700. Passe Partout: Gay, III, 659; Courton: Gay, III, 236; Chavigny: not found in Gay.

First edition, all published. Delandine’s short-lived and scarce literary magazine includes numerous translated excerpts from British authors and other articles of British interest, notably Chesterfield (his portraits of Marlborough and Bolingbroke), Thomas Parnell (’Health, an Eclogue’), a letter from actor James Quin, Thomas Hunter’s Observations on Tacitus, Thomas Chatterton, Johnson (two excerpts from The Rambler, plus a note on his Dictionary), Dick Whittington and his cat, an article on the origin of British newspapers, and Butler’s ‘A Huffing Courtier’.

First edition, inscribed to poet and novelist André Theuriet. One of 500 copies on tinted paper (total edition 537).

First edition, a carnival chapbook with burlesque dialogues. The first woodcut, as a frontispiece, depicts a cartful of fools led by a horse and pierrot, the second shows a mountebank poking fun at his audience. The term ‘Poissarde’ (literally, a fishwife) refers, in general, to coarse and vulgar language and is frequently to be found in chapbooks of the period. Gay I, 608. Worldcat: Wisconsin only outside Europe.

First edition.

First edition.

A collection of children’s stories evidently written by a father (perhaps Herr Schmutzer, whose stamp appears in each) for two young daughters. Each volume is a separate story telling of the girls’ adventures around the world. The text is in German throughout and every page bears a large illustration. A terrifying insight into one early-twentieth century father’s idea of a family entertainment.

Das buch von den beiden Babys. [n.d. c. 1902]. Small 4to (206 × 165 mm), pp. [22], alternating text and drawings. A tale of parental neglect: a family outing on a steam train goes terribly wrong.

‘...Laurentia und Emerentia Stutzlmeier’. 1902. Folio (330 × 210 mm), ff. [30] (the last blank) of which 28 each bear text and a large drawing. Card wrappers, loose in cloth backed boards. The tale of two young sisters lost in the forest during a family picnic. Rescued from a wolf by a kindly hermit they embark on a series of miraculous adventures with a cartload of magic pears and a menagerie of animals. Reunited with their parents they return to the woods to find the hermit dying; they bury him and he is borne aloft by angels.

‘Die gar wundersame geschichte von den beiden Babys in der Techanei’. 1904. Folio (325 × 210 mm), ff. [56], of which 54 each bear text and a large drawing. Crudely sewn in cloth-backed boards, uniform with the above. The father takes his daughters out on an excursion, but an encounter with a witch separates the girls from him. Kidnapped in the witch’s house, they elude her protective snake, toad and cat and escape in a paper boat. Reunited with their father they embark on a series of terrifying adventures under his protection: he slaughters all assailants with a pistol, sword and bare hands, leaving a trail of bloodshed. A return to a derelict house scattered with the skeletons of pets and family members begins a new chapter, before the trio return home in a magical amphibious horse-drawn cart.

‘Die Geschichte von die beiden Babys und die Reise um die Erde’. 1910. Folio (340 × 205 mm), ff. [42], of which 41 each have text and a large drawing. Cloth backed boards. In this final volume Herr Schmutzer oversteps the mark. Taking his young daughters on a round-the-world trip in a self-propelled car (Gibraltar, Africa, Egypt, Persia, China, Siberia, The North Pole) he indulges in the worst kind of xenophobic violence against most of the inhabitants of the known world, all in the interests of the protection of his daughters.

Probable first edition in French of Sheridan’s best novel, dedicated to Richardson (1761). Two French translations appeared in 1762, Robinet’s, and another by the Abbé Prévost entitled Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la vertu. Rochedieu lists only Robinet’s which is probably the first. Rochedieu p. 299.

Sole edition of a substantial political satire on the calamity of the Revolution, a roman-a-clef with Pitt and the Austrian General Mack as major protagonists, masquerading as a novel translated from the English and ‘Naplotain’ (presumably ‘Napoleonic’ rather than Neapolitan). Rare. No copies located outside France. Gay II, 429.

First edition in French of Life and Adventures of Joe Thompson (1750), a very popular ‘ramble’ narrative capitalising on the contemporary appetite for books of genuine voyages. Joe Thompson traverses the globe, and portions of the novel are set in America, where the author had travelled between 1742 and 1744. Of Kimber, the old DNB provides this comment: ‘Novelist and compiler, born in 1719, was son of Isaac Kimber... He gained a scanty subsistence by compiling for booksellers, and died, worn out with such drudgery, in 1769.’ Rochedieu, 177.

A very rare translation of the pseudonymous Siege of London (1885), probably the first edition in French (a condensed French edition also appeared in 1885). An excellent example of the many British speculative novels spawned by the fear of invasion, from the 1871 Siege of Dorking to Erskine Childers’s Riddle of the Sands (1903). In Posteritas’ account, the invasion is set against the background of a collapsed Gladstone Liberal government and crisis in the Middle East. The French invade via Portsmouth and later Dover and Scotland, with the aid of the perfidious Irish, and the novel culminates with the bombardment of Westminster and the Battle of Hyde Park.

One of several early French editions of James’ Letters of Charlotte (1786) a novel giving Werther’s Charlotte a voice of her own. The first French edition appeared the previous year, and another (besides ours) appeared also in 1787. All are rare: Rochedieu lists neither the 1786 French edition or ours. cf. Rochedieu, 168 (1787, ‘Londres’ Paris: Royez, 18mo).

First edition in French? Both ESTC and Rochedieu note 2 issues of 1743 with false Millar imprints. Rochedieu notes one in 16mo and one in 12mo, while ESTC describes both as 12mo. This copy is of ESTC N15027, suggested as earlier than the other issue. Translated by Pierre François Guyot Desfontaines (not by the “Dame Anglaise” given in the title); a key figure in establishing the popularity of the English novel in France. Rochedieu 107.