social sciences

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

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

First edition of one of the earliest French attempts to catalogue and describe the writing systems of various historic and contemporary languages — presented as a kind of museum of alphabets reflecting the diversity of human language and writing. It includes ancient Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac, Phoenecian, Arabic, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Georgian, Ethiopic, Etruscan and Gothic examples, as well as more than one alphabet deemed occult or ‘geomantic’. At least some appear to be imagined, and there seems no doubt that the intent here is as much aesthetic as scholarly. Colletet concludes with an alphabet which has recently come to his attention (he writes), engraved by someone he knows, formed entirely of characters derived from the postures of the human figure. He also notes the existence of examples of many more alphabets in various personal collections, notably that of the Parisian cleric René Michel de la Rochemaillet (1597-1658).
The second part is devoted to codes, ciphers and secret writing, also illustrated, and appears to be a rather faulty abrigement of Blaise de Vigenère’s Traicté des chiffres, ou Secrètes manières d’escrire. It includes alphabets disguised as stars and as masonry.
François Colletet (1628-1680?) was a poet, the son of the poet Guillaume Colletet, a protégé of Cardinal Richelieu. Galland, Historical and analytical Bibliography of the Literature of Cryptology, p. 44. Brunet II, 155; Graesse, VII (Supplement), p. 195.

First edition of these sermons by a French Huguenot emigré pastor in Dublin. The first two sermons are on the subject of religious toleration: ‘Contre l’Intolerance’ and ‘Les justes bornes de la Tolerance’. The Toleration Act had been enacted in Ireland in 1719, granting Dissenters freedom of worship and allowed them to run schools. Caillard argues that not only was intolerance immoral, but 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. The 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.’ (Toleration in 18th century Ireland, Irish Philosophy.com)

The book includes a subscriber’s list of men and women, both of Irish and French extraction. Among them is the name of moral philosopher 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 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.

An intriguing homemade book created by an aspiring young writer, copying extracts from a popular juvenile title, Marmaduke Multiply, published in 1817 and designed to teach multiplication with engaging illustrations. In this version, a Francis (or possibly Frances) Taylor has copied extracts from the book using different hands, without much thought to order. Some are captioned ‘with my left hand’, another ‘half with my right hand’ as though he or she were deciding which was the best hand, or simply trying writing and drawing with an unfamiliar hand. Given the general insistence on right hand writing in the period it is an unusual survival, albeit rudimentary, an evidence of active learning activities in the acquisition of early literacy.

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, one of 176, copy number 53 for collector Armand Durand, an excellent copy of a fragile production, rarely preserved in this state. It was later in the collection of André Barrier, president of the Cent Bibliophiles. An elaborate fin-de-siècle precursor to Carter’s ABC, Uzanne’s Dictionnaire bibliophilosophique has entries for all the major aspects of book production from the author, to publishing, printing, binding and marketing, of collecting and of reading. Memorably referred to as the ‘high priest of fin-de-siècle bibliophilia’ (Silverman, The New Bibliopolis, p. 14) Uzanne explored new technologies to create luxurious and appealing formats for his books, with innovative papers and printing techniques combined with design by artists such as Georges De Feure, who provided the striking art nouveau green jacket here (Millmann, Georges de Feure Maitre du Symbolisme et de l'Art Nouveau, Paris, 1992, p. 141). The japon paper for the text is watermarked throughout with a floral design by Léon Rudnicki. With a limitation of just 176 copies, it is one of Uzanne’s rarer productions, especially so in original condition. Carteret V, p. 189 (’Édition recherchée’).

First separately published edition of the first full French translation of the Communist Manifesto. Partial French translations had appeared swiftly after the first edition of the German original but remained unpublished. Indeed, the influence of Marxist thought in France only took root from the 1880s, when it became dominant in French socialism. The translation of the manifesto is by Marx’s daughter, Laura Lafargue and appeared first in the journal of the Parti Ouvrier Français, Le Socialiste (29 August, 1885), followed by a version corrected by Engels himself in La France socialiste in 1886 and another journal appearance (Ère nouvelle, September 1894) but it did not appear in book form until our edition of 1895.

The translator Laura Lafargue, née Jenny Laura Marx (26 September 1845 – 25 November 1911) was the second daughter of Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen. She married revolutionary writer Paul Lafargue in 1868, translated Marx into French and was instrumental in spreading Marxist theory on the continent. She committed suicide by lethal injection with her husband in 1911 and is buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise.

Exceptionally scarce: copies at British Library and Stanford (Hoover Institution) only outside continental Europe. Andréas, Le Manifeste communiste de Marx et Engels. Histoire et bibliographie 1848-1918, 331 and see Printing and the Mind of Man 326 (first edition, 1848)

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.
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 with the Lydis illustrations. One of a total edition of 131 copies, this one of the 115 on papier de Rives). The illustrations, many in the style of illuminated miniatures or icons are transformed through brilliant pochoir colouring executed in the workshop of master colourist Jean Saude, reproducing the artist’s signature on each.
These verse litanies, after the traditional catholic Marian litany, are entirely the creation of Armand Godoy and were first published (unillustrated) in 1930. Symbolist poet Godoy was born in Havana in 1880 and spent the first part of his life in Cuba and Peru, working in banking and the tobacco trade, before emigrating to France in 1919 with the express intention of becoming a poet ‘dans la langue de Baudelaire’. Much influenced by the Parnassians and the symbolists he was also a major collector of books, manuscripts and prints, amassing an unrivalled collection of Baudelaireiana. Among his numerous small-scale published works in French is his translation of Poe’s Raven — Le Corbeau d’Edgar Poe (Émile-Paul frères, 1929, with a frontispiece by Lydis).

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.

First edition of the Unlawful Societies Act, part of the measures enacted under William Pitt to suppress republican opposition. It proscribed certain named societies, specifically the Societies of United Englishmen, United Scotsmen, United Britons, United Irishmen and the London Corresponding Society, all deemed seditious, together with other secret societies bound by oath. The only exemption to the latter group were the Freemasons, on account of lobbying by prominent members of parliament. The Act had a lasting effect on the book trade and the appearance of the printed book, because it placed strict controls on printers, requiring them to register their presses and to provide a detailed imprint (giving their names and addresses) on every item printed, in an attempt to limit the circulation of seditious pamphlets. This proved to be the longest lasting aspect of the Act, not relaxed until the Printer’s Imprint Act of 1961, which allowed smaller print jobs (such greetings cards or stationery items) to be printed without imprints. Despite the exemption of Freemasons from the terms of the act, it nonetheless required them to submit names of their members at meetings, thereby requiring a requirement for record keeping which has proved valuable to the study of the history of Freemasonry.

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 618-634 here.

First edition of the last Witchcraft Act, repealing the former acts of Elizabeth I and James I (and Mary of Scotland) against witchcraft, and declaring magic, witchcraft and sorcery fraudulent. The last person to be legally executed for witchcraft was the Scottish woman Janet Horne in 1727, but legal sentiment had by then absorbed Enlightenment thinking and rational explanation of all forms of magic. Punishment by death was replaced in the 1735 act by imprisonment of up to one year only, on the basis that witchcraft could no longer be considered a crime, merely a nuisance.

In this volume, formerly belonging to the council of the City of Canterbury (Kent), it is interesting to find an old (perhaps early nineteenth-century) paper scrap marking the Witchcraft Act among the many other acts contained in the volume, together with a marginal pencil marking beside the shoulder note ‘Persons pretending to exercise Witchcraft, tell Fortunes, or by crafty Science to discover stolen Goods’.

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 a rare pamphlet issued in the wake of the decree issued by the police prefect Claude Mangin on April 14, 1830, prohibiting prostitutes ‘from appearing, at any time and under any pretext, in the passages, in public gardens and on the boulevards’ and ordering them to engage in prostitution only in licensed brothels. This measure lasted only three months, but was enough for its opponents to publish dozens of pamphlets. All these occasional pieces are extremely rare, including this one.

Purporting to be the work of a Matrone, jurisconsulte de ces dames this enquiry and petition is satirical in tone, and yet still gives voice to the women it represents, by outlining in detail how Mangin’s heavy-handed decree would effect them at various levels, pointing out the impossibility of enclosing the thousands of Parisian filles de joie in licenses houses. The frontispiece, which has been attributed to Henri Monnier, shows a discussion among the women debating the pour et contre of the measures, presided over by the matron. It is captioned ‘Comité central et de Sabbat des Donzelles de Paris’, likening it to a ‘sabbath’ of witches. WorldCat lists copies at the Bn, Cleveland Public Library and Bryn Mawr College only.

First edition. A near pristine file copy of this French language example of an early rag book from Dean and Co, who pioneered the rag book for the youngest children in 1903, producing boldly coloured printed calico books designed to be washable and indestructible — the Dean logo shows two dogs pulling at a rag book, and the inserted advert leaf states that children can carry the book in their mouths without danger ( ‘Les couleurs employées dans ces livres sont fortement fixés. Les enfants peuvent les porter à la bouche sans aucun danger. Ces livres peuvent être lavé’). Qu’est cela? is a simple vocabulary book, naming fifty familiar objects including toys (dolls, a cup-and-ball, a paintbox, a toy train, a jack-in-the box, a kite and a rocking horse) as well as a rifle, a sword, a drum and an automobile. No library copies found in WorldCat or JISC LibraryHub.

A file copy from Dean and Co, who pioneered the rag book for the youngest children in 1903, producing boldly coloured printed calico books designed to be washable and indestructible — the Dean logo shows two dogs pulling at a rag book. It illustrates twenty-four animals, including the dog on the cover, as well as butterflies, a giraffe, a camel, a parrot, a kangaroo, three monkeys and a turkey, all captioned in French. The pinked edges were designed to minimise fraying, and in this case the copy is unused. No library copies found in WorldCat or JISC LibraryHub.

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).

‘Breverls’ or folding paper amulets were produced by, or on behalf of, nuns in the eighteenth century and beyond and sold to visitors and pilgrims to convent churches. They were carried by their owners or worn around the neck, sewn into clothing or tucked into pockets. Their combination of prints of saints invoked for protection against sorcery and natural disaster is variable in different examples, but most examples include (as here) a panel of bituminised (tar) paper in which is impressed small devotional objects, texts, scraps, or pieces of plant matter considered protective. These tar panels can be elaborate and even include tiny metal medals (one is preserved here). The amulets were usually tightly folded and sealed then stitched into tightly fitting fabric or paper cases. They were not designed to be opened (indeed it was believed that doing so would nullify their efficacy). This example has been fully unfolded and conserved by mounting on paper so that each of its elements is clearly visible. From the left hand top to the bottom, the elements comprise: a ‘plague cross’ (folded sheet c. 150 × 108 mm, with an engraved print with an elaborate emblematic double cross as an amulet against sorcery, fire, plague and tempest, with text: ‘Contra Maleficia et Pestum, Contra Ignem, Pestem et Tempestales; Mary at calvary; the three Magi (with engraved prayer); Saint Francis; the Virgin; Saint Anthony of Padua; Christ turning water into wine; Saint Ignatius; Christ turning water into wine (a different version); Saint John Nepomucene; a tar panel with miniature ceramic column, red felt scrap and plant seed heads; Saints Francis, Anastasius, James, Agatha (with text); small panel of printed invocation; a larger printed invocation. The red silk bag into which all these elements were formerly sewn is preserved, as is an undated nineteenth-century envelope, postmarked ‘Neisse’ (Silesia) addressed to a recipient in nearby Neustadt O.S (upper Silesia).

Breverls are remarkable evidence for popular Catholic belief, as well as the persistence of belief in magic and the constant fear of natural disaster (fire, tempest, plague, earthquakes etc) as well as a very particular tradition of devotional commerce. The prints are rarely signed and are derived from earlier archetypes, or printed from much degraded plates, their crude execution giving an appearance of greater antiquity than is sometimes the case. Surviving examples tend to date from the second half of the eighteenth-century, though they were produced both before and after. Nineteenth-century examples often appear to be printed from much worn plates, with the minute text often illegible, giving the appearance of reproduction by some stereotype process.

An extensive antiquarian and heraldic register, providing the abbreviated arms of hundreds of English monarchs, nobles and landowners from the medieval era (and in some cases before) to the reign of Charles I. To judge from the paper and handwriting it was probably compiled in the first thirty years of the eighteenth century by someone with access to a variety of earlier heraldic manuscripts for transcription. It is particularly interesting for including many retrospectively attributed arms to individuals living before the formal establishment of heraldry, such as the early conquerors of Britain and the kings and kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England. Its two largest sections are the catalogue of arms from the reign of Edward the Confessor to that of Charles I on 69 folios (copied via a version by the seventeenth-century herald, Robert Glover from a book belonging to one Joseph Holland), and the transcript of the so-called ‘Parliamentary Roll’ made c. 1312-14 giving a complete catalogue of arms borne in the reign of Edward I. The so-called ‘Rouen Roll’ transcribed on f. 77 of circa 1410, was traditionally thought to be a catalogue of all those bearing arms present at the Siege of Rouen during the Hundred Years War. The complete contents of the register are:

1-1v. The fyve Conquests of this Land with the Names & Arms of the Conquerors (Brutus, Julius Caesar, Constantine of Armorica or Vortigern, Hengist, William Duke of Normandy, with their arms).
1v-3. The Saxons divided this Island into 7 Kingedomes (with the names of their kings and their arms).
3-72v. [Arms of the Peerage in order of their creation] A Catalogue of the Armes belonging to England with the causes of the alterac[i]on thereof from the Reigne of St. Edward the Confessor to this p[re]sent [1628, the reign of Charles I).
73-75v. blank
76-76v. Differences born by the Royal Family.
77-77v. [The Rouen Roll, c. 1410]. Les nosmes des nobles q[ui] fueront oue [?avec] le Roy Henrye le quint au Siege de Roan...
78-98. [The Parliamentary Roll, c. 1312-14] Le copie dun ancien liver daunes q[ue] Messier Somerset Heralt avoit du Joseph Holland in couleurs. Conteniant les nosmes & armes des nobles & chivaliers d’Angliterre au temps d’Edward le prim[er] & second Roies d’Angliterre.
98v-100v. blank
101-110r. [Roll of andowners of Suffolk, in the time of Edward I, listed by Hundred].

The volume was later (after 1939) in the collection of the heraldic scholar, Edward Mars Elmhirst (1915-1957), of Worsboroughdale (Yorks). He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Major in the Territorial Army and was well-known for his researches in heraldry (he was offered a position as herald-extraordinary at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953). He also wrote a book on Merchants’ marks, published posthumously by the Harleian Society in 1959.