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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).

First edition of these three photographically illustrated albums, mainly portraits of contemporary Parisian actresses, dancers and singers, both from the mainstream theatres and the smaller dance halls and cafés-concerts. Reutlinger’s studio specialised in such portraits, usually actresses photographed in different degrees of deshabille in either studio settings or in the corridors and dressing rooms of the theatre. The voyeurism of the photographer is extended into bedroom and bathroom scenes intended to illustrate the daily routine of the ideal Parisienne. Sarah Bernhardt and Yvette Guilbert appear, while most subjects are now little-known but then much admired Parisian performers.

Madame Gabrielle Boissier ran a finishing school (’Etablissement libre d’Enseignement supérieur’). for English and American girls in an impressive house at 14 avenue Gourgand, in the 17th arrondissement. The prospectus illustrates its elegant interior (salons, dining room, two libraries and bedrooms). The text includes an enthusiastic testimonial in English describing life at the school and its associated activities.

This little pocket book has been densely filled with diary notes by a young girl or young woman, presumably one Flora Keene. She copies out several hymns at the opening, and then completes every day of her diary, with dense and minute notes, now very hard to read, mainly noting family comings and goings. The frontispiece by John Leech entitled ‘Volunteer Movement — Jones & Family go under Canvas’ is a satire on the British volunteer rifle corps, formed in 1859 as a response to public fears of a French invasion. There is also a series of delightful vignettes by Tenniel on Shakespearean quotations.

First edition of an early collection of poetry by Fletcher (1863–1935), perhaps better known for his detective fiction.  This copy inscribed by the English poet Olive Custance to the American writer and salonnière Natalie Clifford Barney —‘To Natalie … The Poet and Lover … from the “Little Princess”’— on the front flyleaf.   
‘An avid reader of Pre-Raphaelite and aesthetic literature’, in the 1890s, Custance (1874–1944) ‘developed somewhat flirtatious relationships with John Lane, Henry Harland, and Richard Le Gallienne—respectively the publisher, editor, and reader of The Yellow Book.  Custance was one of the most prolific women poets published in this notorious journal, with poems appearing in eight of its thirteen volumes …
‘Custance’s first poetry volume, Opals, was published in 1897 by The Bodley Head [the same year as Fletcher’s] …  The poems addressed to John Gray were also included in this volume, along with several other love poems directed at ambiguously gendered beloveds.  Such sexual ambiguity was reflected in Custance’s love life during this period.  In the winter of 1900 she received an admiring letter from Natalie Barney, the openly lesbian author and salon hostess.  Custance was invited by Barney to Paris, where she also befriended the symbolist poet Renée Vivien (Barney’s former lover).  Accounts of this ménage are contradictory.  Barney’s autobiography stated that Vivien was jealous of Custance; however, Vivien’s letters and her roman-à-clef A Woman Appeared to Me (1904)—in which Custance appeared as Dagmar—suggest that she and Custance enjoyed a brief love affair during the winter of 1901 
‘During this period, in June 1901, Custance wrote a letter of admiration to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945).  The poets began to correspond, using the personas of “Fairy Prince” for Douglas, and “Princess” and “Page” for Custance’ (Oxford DNB), which may account for the inscription here.
 

First edition, inscribed by the author’s father to Edmund Gosse of this posthumous novel by Toru Dutt (1856-1877), Indian poet, translator, and novelist. Dutt was born in Calcutta and received her early education there, both in Indian and European languages, under the encouragement of her mother and father (the latter a colonial administrator). ‘In 1869, when she was aged thirteen, and at a time when conservative Hindus believed that crossing the ‘black waters’ was blasphemous, the Dutt family travelled by sea to Europe. Toru and her elder sister Aru were the first Bengali girls to dare such a transgression’ (Chandani Lokugé in ODNB). Toru studied French in Nice and Paris, and English in London and Cambridge. On returning to India she continued her reading of French and British Romantics such as Hugo, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley as well as the Brontës and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She also began an intensive course of study in Sanskrit, while at the same time adapting her new knowledge to retell legends from the Mahabharata in English, using traditional English poetic forms. She died of consumption in 1877 at the age of just twenty-one, by which time she had written four books, of which only one, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876), was published in her lifetime.

The novel Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers, was set in Brittany, France, and was published only posthumously. ‘The manuscript, hand-copied by Govin Chunder, was sent to Clarisse Bader, who contributed a foreword, and with whose assistance it was published by Didier in Paris in 1879 and included in the Librarie Académique’. It was an ‘exciting hybrid between the nineteenth-century European gothic romance and the realist genres, and can be read as the creative experiment by a talented novice writer inspired by her reading of European literature’ (Lokugé).

For Western readers, as both a young woman and as an Indian writing in English, a great deal of the interest in Toru Dutt’s poetry was due to her familiarity with English and French literature. Edmund Gosse was an enthusiastic patron and wrote: ‘it would seem that the marvellous facilities of Toru’s mind still slumbered, when, in her thirteenth year, her father decided to take his daughters to Europe to learn English and French. To the end of her days Toru was a better French than English scholar. She loved France best, she knew its literature best, she wrote its language with more perfect elegance.’ (Ancient Ballads, xii). Worldcat lists copies at BL and University of Manitoba only outside continental Europe.

Caroline Naudet (1775-1839), one of the very few female caricaturists of her era, she was the daughter of the caricaturist Thomas-Charles Naudet. She is known as the artist of some 25 separate satirical prints c. 1817-1823. The plate depicts an older well-dressed lady sitting for an urbane looking artist. The caption reads:
‘Une dame de qualite faisant faire son portrait s'efforcait de se retrecir la bouche l'artiste s'en appercut et lui dit pour peu que madame le veuille je n'en ferait pas du tout’ (A lady of quality having her portrait done was trying to narrow her mouth. The artist noticed this and said to her, if Madam would like it, I won’t paint it at all). Benezit III, 347.

First edition of a confessional novel by Lemonnier (1845–1913), the Belgian writer and art critic who ‘shared the aims of the French symbolists and stimulated a revival of Belgian letters’ (Oxford Companion to French Literature), in which the female narrator writes against a male-dominated society which leaves no room for the possibility of female emancipation such that she is driven to dress as a man. 
This copy belonged to the ‘high priest of fin-de-siècle bibliophilia’ (Silverman, The New Bibliopolis, p. 14), Octave Uzanne (1851–1931).  One of only ten numbered copies printed on vergé de Hollande, it includes a unique printed presentation leaf, ‘Cet exemplaire a été imprimé spécialement pour M. Octave Uzanne’, tipped in as pp. 1–2 and inscribed ‘En fidèle souvenir mon cher Uzanne, le double homage de l’éditeur et de l’auteur.  Camille Lemonnier’. 
‘There is no more original Belgian artist than Camille Lemonnier.  A powerful and fertile writer, he represents Belgian literary activity for more than forty years, until his death in 1913, and even if he reflect the various tendencies of the French mind, and adapt himself to his surroundings, he is Flemish to the backbone in his mystico-sensual leanings, in his pious materialism, … in his Rubens-like fertility and love of colour, dash and force.  It is true that he reminds the reader of Zola, and even of Dickens; but it is above all of Rubens and Jordaens that he makes us think, because, like them, he paints his imagination in the form of ever sensitive emotions’ (Gladys Turquet-Milnes, Some modern Belgian Writers, 1916, p. 87).

First edition, first issue, complete with all subsequently censored text, including the final scene in which the heroine makes love to a partially animated transgender mannequin. Rachilde, who was to style herself as a ‘man of letters’ on her calling cards was just 24 when Monsieur Vénus, her second novel was published in Brussels. The book caused an immediate scandal and was vigorously suppressed by the Belgian and French authorities. Subsequent editions were shorn of the novel’s more shocking passages, which were conveniently attributed to Rachilde’s (probably-fictitiou)s co-author ‘Francis Talman’, whose name appeared on the title page. Some critics refused to believe that a work which frankly recounted the pursuit of sexual pleasure by a noblewoman, Raoule de Vénérande, could possibly be the work of a young woman. It remains an unsettling work, describing Raoule’s treatment of her young male lover, Silvert, who she persistently feminizes and humiliates. Silvert ultimately dies at the hands of one of Raoule’s suitor’s in a duel, and is replaced by her with a mannequin (with real hair, teeth and fingernails) who can be alternately dressed in male and female clothes.

The Belgian authorities sought to destroy as many copies of the first edition as possible, and it is accordingly a noted rarity. We can locate the following copies: BnF, Bibliothèque Jaques Doucet, Institut de France in France and Library of Congress, Harvard, University of Houston, Vanderbilt University in North America, British Library and Cambridge in the UK and Kb in the Netherlands.

First collected edition of the first series of Tales of Fashionable Life, Edgeworth’s most ambitious literary project. containing Ennui, Almeria, Madame de Fleury, The Dun, Manoeuvring. In his preface, Richard Lovell Edgeworth notes his daughter's aim ‘to promote, by all her writings, the progress of education, from the cradle to the grave’, and that the present and envisaged volumes of the series were ‘intended to point out some of those errors, to which the higher classes of society are disposed’. A second series appeared in 1812, for which she received £1050 making her the most commercially successful novelist of her age.

First trade edition of a novel which had first appeared in a small edition (between 25 and 40 copies) privately circulated in December 1823. Ourika, based on fact, and influenced by Rousseau and Chateaubriand, is the complex story of a black African child 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. This edition bears the statement on the verso of the half-title ‘Publié au profit d’un établissement de charité, and has no edition statement on the title-page, which bears a quotation from Byron (as called for). A true best-seller, at least four editions appeared in 1824, together with four plays and two poems based on the novel.

First edition. A striking early Lydis production. Each plate is accompanied by an exotic love lyric by Schwabach (publisher, author and patron of Expressionism) ‘Die verliebten Billete des Prinzen Salamu’. The 18 plates reproduce Lydis’ orientalist miniatures in collotype and lithograph with gold and silver. The Müller firm had been established at Potsdam 1919 by Irmgard Kiepenheuer and Hans Müller. Kiepenhauer was an important figure in the artistic world of Weimar Berlin, hosting a cultural salon in Potsdam and being in personal contact with the most important contemporary artists — including many from the Bauhaus in Weimar. The firm issued several influential portfolios showcasing artists such as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Pechstein, Christian Rohlfs, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. One of 1100 copies (of which 100 were signed).

A rare publisher’s advert for a short-lived satirical almanac devoted to the comic lowlife of the Parisian Latin Quarter, with its famously hedonistic students and lorettes (courtesans or sex workers). The lorette emerged both in reality and in the popular imagination during the July Monarchy (1830-48), named after the Right Bank church of Notre Dame de Lorette where they were thought to reside and the almanac promises a range of playful gender inverting fun based on the ‘Vésuviennes’ (popular heroines of the 1848 revolution who donned uniform and took to the barricades) including the confessions of a Vésuvienne and their ‘Charte-Constitution’.
During the February Revolution of 1848, French women briefly hoped for political rights and an improvement in their social situation. Such hopes were short-lived and popular reaction was expressed in satires like this. The complex image of the Vésuvienne woman warrior, both pleasantly seductive and scandalously rebellious. She appeared in all the major newspapers, while real women in the streets claimed this title by parading under a Vesuvian banner. Their morality was often called into question and it is no surprise to see lorettes and Vésuviennes share a billing here. In Belhomme’s lithograph, three lorettes step out of basket (one thumbing her nose); a reflection of a popular contemporary song ‘Le Panier aux lorettes’.

First edition of the last book by a prolific French clairvoyant — in the form of a purportedly transcribed decree from the gods of Mount Olympus, this is a spirited plea in favour of the Duchesse de Berry then imprisoned for leading a rebellion against the French King Charles X after the July Revolution. Like Le Normand’s other works it is couched in terms of dreams, predictions and angelic interventions. It bears her signature on the back of the half-title as a measure against piracy and the frontispiece shows her taking the Duchesse’s hand in prison, as an angel swoops down to crown her.

Marie-Anne Le Normand (1772–1843) was a celebrated (or notorious) clairvoyant, publisher, booskeller and self-publicist. Famed throughout Europe for her exclusive clientele, she popularised cartomancy and spawned an enormous wave of imitators. At the height of her career she claimed to have advised the likes of Robespierre, Talleyrand, Metternich, the Empress Josephine and Emperor Alexander himself; others argued that the whole thing was a sham, and she was frequently arrested, spending several weeks in prison.

First edition. Fragoletta, in which a woman disguises herself as a man and seduces another woman, was a major point of reference for early nineteenth-century literature, notably inspiring Balzac’s Séraphîta and Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin with its fascination with the androgynous or doubly-sexed body. It clearly took inspiration from Bernini’s statue of the sleeping hermaphrodite and is one of the first nineteenth century novels to feature a hermaphrodite protagonist. It’s most obvious echo in English literature is in Swinburne, whose 1866 Poems and Ballads contained the poem ‘Fragoletta’ — an ode to androgyny in which the boy/girl (’a double-rose’) is rendered more desirable by their double sexuality.

Sole edition of the small catalogue issued to accompany Monnier’s needlework exhibition at the Galerie Druet at 20, rue Royale, ‘Du lundi 5 mai au vendredi 30 mai 1924’. Copy number 13 of 15 on Japon (before 25 on Hollande and 100 on ordinary paper, total edition 140 copies).

It lists just 14 pieces (1918-1923) including some of her most celebrated pieces including a set of four tarot images, l’Abeille and Palme (illustrating Valéry) and Féerie, after Léon-Paul Fargue. Valéry wrote in his preface: ‘Mais considérez ces panneaux merveilleusement colorés. Leur éclat les apparente aux plus merveilleuses productions de la vie, aux élytres, aux plumes d’oiseau, aux coquillages, aux pétales. Nulle peinture ne peut atteindre à ces forces ni à ces délicatesses que les brins de soie savamment associés font paraître’.

Marie Monnier was the wife of the artist Paul-Émile Bécat and sister of bookseller-publisher Adrienne Monnier (Sylvia Beach’s partner). Marie exhibited both in her sister’s bookshop and at the Galerie Druet. She also created a large embroidery inspired by Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and painted one of the famous signboards for Shakespeare and Company (now at Princeton). Worldcat lists US copies at Harvard and Princeton (three copies in the Sylvia Beach collection).

First edition, inscribed by Keller to artist and illustrator W. Graham Robertson: ‘To Mr Graham Robertson I send this book, hoping that it may convince him of the reality of my cordial admiration. Helen Keller. September 24th 1938’ and loosely inserted is an envelope containing a telegram from Alexander Woollcott to Graham Robertson at Sandhills, his Surrey home saying, ‘Helen Keller and I send our love to you at Christmas’. Keller’s inscription is reproduced in Robertson’s Letters. In a letter of 29 December 1938 he recorded receiving ‘to my inordinate pride, an affectionate message from that eighth wonder of the world, Helen Keller. What have I ever done that she should think of me’. Several days later he outlined the background of their connection. ‘Helen Keller began some time ago to send me little messages through a mutual friend who had spoken to her of Time Was. I felt compelled to tell her (very gently and tactfully, I hope) that I was quite unable to believe her existence, and that she and her impossible career were quite obviously a beautiful fairy tale invented for the encouragement and comfort of the world. She then sent me one of her books, inscribed (of course she can write―that is quite a minor miracle) … And then she got Time Was in Braille and seemed to like it. And that’s how it happened that am privileged to call myself a friend of Helen Keller’s’.

First edition. A novel illustrating the contemporary vogue for fiction based on the records of the French law courts. A contemporary reviewer in the Revue encyclopèdique savaged the novel itself but evidently found the 38-page introduction interesting - being a commentary on the merits of the relatively recent development of trial by jury in France. The book found several other reviews in the same year and evidently divided opinion. The Revue bibliographique du Royaume des Pays-bas simply noted ‘Cet ouvrage a été saisi par la police’.

Dubergier, who did not put his name on the title, was prolific both as a translator from English and as a novelist in his own right — usually favouring popular literature of the Walter Scott variety, sometime with Scottish or Irish settings. Querard, 11, p. 115. Worldcat lists the Bn and Princeton copies only.

First edition with the Lydis illustrations, of Colette’s coming-of-age novel (first published in 1900-3 with debatable contribution from her then-husband, Willy). This is copy number 88 of 100 on pur fil Lafuma with plates in 2 states, after copies on Japon and Hollande, of a total edition of 1585 copies on different papers. There was mutual admiration (and perhaps more) between Colette and Lydis, the former having written an admiring note on the artist for the programme of the 1934 Bal des petits lits blancs, which Lydis had illustrated.

First edition of this very scarce novel by a significant British Catholic author. She was born Gertrude Hext in Cornwall in 1812 and became a Catholic in 1844. A review of Edith Mortimer in The Rambler enthused: ‘Mrs. Parsons is one of our best writers of Catholic fiction. There is a heartiness and energy about almost every thing that comes from her pen...’

‘A deeply religious woman, Gertrude Parsons was charitable to the poor and a leading benefactor of the mission at Little Malvern. Gertrude Parsons’s enthusiastic commitment to her adopted faith was most apparent, however, in many of her published works. Thornberry Abbey (1846), in which the heroine and her clergyman fiancé are both converted to Catholicism, is clearly semi-autobiographical. In another early novel, Edith Mortimer, or, The Trials of Life (1857), a young Roman Catholic convert learns to conquer her pride, breaking off her engagement to a rich protestant cousin. In the 1860s Gertrude Parsons wrote four tract tales for Burns and Oates’s Tales and Narrative series, which was aimed at a working-class audience; these included Lent Lilies and The Muffin Girl’ (Rosemary Mitchell in Oxford DNB). WorldCat lists US copies at Brigham Young and Huntington only.