[Rarebooks] fa: HISTORICAL REMARKS & ANECDOTES on the THE BASTILLE 1780

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, May 19. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/c3h952f

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[Joseph Marie Brossays du Perray; John Howard:] Historical Remarks and Anecdotes on the Castle of the Bastille. Translated from the French published in 1774. London: Printed for T. Cadell, and N. Conant, MDCCLXXX [1780]. First  edition thus. Tall 8vo pamphlet (24 cm) loosely laid into modern portfolio; [6] + 29 + [1] pp.; folding plan. ESTC T36327.

First edition of the first English translation, edited by the great English penal reformer, John Howard. The pamphlet by Brossays du Perray (sometimes Brossaies du Perray) was first published in 1774. Howard explains that "the sale of it in France was prohibited on the severest penalties, for reasons that will readily appear from the work itself, and a copy was not easily obtained." He was determined to publish it "as affording a very interesting and instructive comparison between the horrors of despotic power, and the mild and just administration of equal laws in a free state…"

The pamphlet was issued stitch-bound, but the original stitching is long gone and the leaves are now held gently together at the spine by professionally-applied archival paper; otherwise an "unsophisticated" copy, untrimmed as first issued. Browning and shallow chipping to the edges, damp-stain to the margins of the folding plan, some soiling to the last (blank) page. Housed in a custom-made quarter cloth portfolio.