[Rarebooks] fa: 1789 HISTORICAL REMARKS on the CASTLE OF THE BASTILLE - w/ Folding Plan

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, September 27. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/pf4qolm

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[Joseph Marie Brossays du Perray:] Historical Remarks on the Castle of the Bastille: With Curious and Entertaining Anecdotes of that Fortress, &c. &c. From the French. London: Printed for H. Gardner, opposite St. Clement’s Church, in the Strand; J. Sewell, Cornhill; J. Walter, Charing-Cross; and J. Debrett, Piccadilly, 1789. First edition thus; tall 8vo (22.5 cm), untrimmed in modern wraps with printed title label, custom clamshell box; [4] + 76 pp.; with the half-title page, engraved frontispiece and folding plan. ESTC T154472.

A new translation of Brossays du Perray's work, first published in France in 1774, issued in the wake of the fall of the Bastille in July, 1789. In a dedicatory preface addressed to the great English penologist John Howard, editor of an earlier translation (1780), the anonymous translator celebrates the event ("May every other abode of the objects of oppression share the fate of the Bastille!") and hopes that Howard may soon return to England; he was at that time in Eastern Europe, where he died, in 1790, of typhus contracted on a prison inspection.

Light soiling to the half-title page and last page, some toning and dust-soiling to the untrimmed page edges, a couple of small spots, else clean and fresh in modern wraps, housed in a striking custom clamshell box.